In Hiding 3/5 Jack, Ianto, OFC
Title: In Hiding
Author: Shannon
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ianto, OFC, Jack, Jack/Ianto (sort of)
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize belongs to me. They belong to the BBC.
Spoilers: Vague ones maybe from seasons 1 and 2.
Summary: AU. The Time Agency needs Jack to hide someone without his knowledge. The Torchwood team needs to keep her safe. (AU team with no Gwen).
Betas: kitty_poker1, velvetwhip, and elizabuffy.
Author's Notes: This was written for the Support Stacie Author Auction. For Writerreaderstories.
I know I didn't meet all of her request but I sincerely hope I managed to include enough of it to make her happy with it.
Chapter Three
Ianto slid into the seat across from Illyana. They had chosen the small café because neither had much time. Both were needed at work and Ianto had lied to Jack in order to get here anyway. He obviously couldn’t tell Jack he was having breakfast with Illyana because he'd want to join them, so Ianto had offered to run out and pick up pastries for the team, as well as to stop to pick up a fresh supply of coffee beans. That gave him some time out of the Hub without anyone questioning where he was, but not too long.
"You've figured it out, haven't you?" Illyana asked as soon as Ianto was seated. There was no point in beating around the bush. Ianto had been suspicious the moment he'd caught her staring at Quinn and Carter on the street. He was also smart enough to research her background more thoroughly. "How much do you know?"
Ianto was surprised, to say the least, at her immediate confession that there was anything to know. He'd come here expecting her to at least try to deny the phony background. "I know that what Jack found during your original background check is mostly planted information," Ianto offered. "I don't know who you are, why you lied about it, or why you're here."
She took a deep breath. This was her chance, possibly the best option she had. She could tell Ianto everything. Come clean on all of it. He'd go right to Jack-Illyana didn't doubt that-but that would solve her problem with being ordered not to tell Jack anything. She knew she'd still be in some trouble, as they'd never believe she didn't know what Ianto would do, but she could at least plead ignorance and point out that she did not personally trigger Jack's memories which was all she'd really agreed to anyway. Once the truth was out, they'd help her. Jack, Ianto, Tosh, Owen: they'd help keep her safe.
Of course, she couldn’t deny the possibility that this plan could backfire as well. She was telling the man who currently loved Jack very much that she was Jack's wife. Okay, ex-wife as the Agency had dissolved the marriage when they erased Jack's memory. Ianto had shown before he would do whatever he thought necessary to protect someone he loved. He could just as easily decide to turn her over to Quinn and let her disappear without a trace, tell Jack he discovered her phony identity and when confronted she ran, or something. Right now though, it was a risk she was going to have to take; Ianto was still a better option than returning home and being forced into that marriage.
"I'm going to tell you everything," she said. "You aren't going to like some of it-most of it-but I don't know what else to do."
Ianto nodded. He had walked in ready for a fight, ready to threaten to tell Jack, ready to do whatever was necessary to find out who she was. He hadn't been prepared for her to offer the information so quickly or easily. She looked frightened though, her eyes darting all around her as if she thought they were being watched. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth.
*****
"Jack," Tosh called from her desk. "I think I found something on that Rift spike."
"Did you find the cause?" Jack asked, coming down the steps from his office to stand behind her.
"Sorry, no. Well, maybe. I was going through the CCTV of that area from the time of the spike until we left. Looking for something human makes it difficult but look at this." She hit a few buttons on her keyboard and then pointed to the monitor.
"I don't see anything."
"Here." She backed the recording up slightly and pointed again. "Here there's no one on the street. Not a single person near that post. Then just a few seconds later these two men are there. They didn't walk up. They just appeared."
Jack nodded. He saw it now. "Can you freeze that frame?"
Tosh did as he asked and he stared at the monitor for a few more minutes. The men looked familiar, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. Just a nagging feeling he'd seen them before.
"There's more," Tosh said, speeding up the recording to the time marker she wanted him to see next. "I decided to see if I could follow them with CCTV."
"And were you able to?"
"For a while," she confirmed. "And I found this."
She slowed the recording down to normal speed again and pointed to the screen. The two men were walking past Ianto and Illyana and Jack watched as first Illyana and then Ianto turned to watch them. Ianto turned back and said something to Illyana, who was still staring after the men. Jack frowned as he watched the two talking and, not for the first time, wished that CCTV included sound. Ianto had spotted something about the men that grabbed his attention, but it was Illyana's reaction that worried Jack. She looked almost frightened at first and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he should recognize them.
"Do we know who they are?" Jack asked.
"I'm running the recognition program now but I don't think so," Tosh said. "It does seem like Illyana knew them though. Maybe we should ask her?"
Jack frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to do that, not yet. He'd talk to Ianto first, find out what had happened that night and why neither had mentioned it. "Not yet. Just keep this between us for now, okay?"
"Sure."
*****
"I'm from the 51st century," Illyana began. "I'm a Time Agent."
"Like Jack and Hart?" Ianto asked. He briefly wondered when his life had gotten so strange that the words 'I'm from the future' didn't seem at all unbelievable to him.
"Yeah. It might be best if you let me tell you all of this and then you ask questions," she answered. When Ianto nodded his agreement, she continued. "Several years ago I was given an undercover assignment to stop this smuggling ring. The details don't really matter, other than the head of the ring decided he….liked me. That worked for us for a while-as his girlfriend I had access to things I wouldn't have as an employee."
Illyana offered a small smile when Ianto nodded his understanding. She was trying to decide how much was safe to tell him. She wanted him to know enough that she'd get the help she needed, but too much and she'd be making him a target; she didn't want to do that either, so she had to tread carefully.
"Then things…changed. I don't know if he suspected me as an agent or if he was serious, but he wanted to get married. I couldn't do that, for obvious reasons, and because he was already treating me almost as property. Imagine how much worse it would be if I were married to him. I turned him down and he didn't take it well at all. He became convinced it was because of another man, that there was someone I preferred over him. I was frightened. He wasn't the most emotionally stable man you've ever met."
Ianto remained silent as she told her story. He was definitely curious now. Was she hiding here? Had the Time Agency sent her? Had Jack been part of hiding her here? Did he already know about her past? Was Ianto wasting his time looking into this at all?
"It wasn't safe for me to wear my vortex manipulator, or even have it with me while undercover, so they always set up meetings for me to report in. Not long after I turned down the marriage proposal I had to report in and the Agency sent Jack to take the report."
"I had never met Jack before that day but I knew him by reputation. I told him everything that had happened. That I was frightened. Before I had even finished my report we were attacked. I had been followed."
Illyana stopped talking again. This was where she'd be telling Ianto the things he wasn't going to like. She had to hope that she could convince Ianto that she had no intention of interfering with him and Jack. Jack had never loved her; she knew that. Those feelings had all been one-sided. Jack was being Jack and doing what was necessary to keep her safe.
"There wasn't much we could do. The Agency wasn't going to help us-they aren't like government agencies in this time. They weren't going to risk exposure to save us, so we ran. We hid for a while but they kept coming after us. We kept running and moving and trying to stay one step ahead. Jack promised he'd keep me safe, and he kept trying to contact the Agency for help. Then one day he decided that the easiest way to stop Cameron from marrying me was if I was already married."
"You're married to Jack?" Ianto interrupted. He'd tried to listen quietly to the story and he had intended to keep his questions to himself until she finished but he knew where this was going now. Why couldn’t Jack's past stay in the future where it belonged? When she nodded a confirmation, he asked, "So he's hiding you here, now?"
"We aren't married anymore, though I am hiding here," she explained. "But Jack isn't hiding me, not consciously anyway. He has no idea who I am anymore."
Ianto raised an eyebrow in question. It didn't make any sense. How could Jack not know?
"We got married, but we still had to keep running," she continued. "It didn't stop anything. He had just upped the game. Now he wanted Jack dead. Eventually the Agency did step in. They found us and brought us in. They couldn’t stop Cameron and our cover was blown anyway. They wanted to move me to work in a different time, put me on a different case somewhere Cameron's men would never find me. They had said Jack would be fine on his own. Once I was out of the picture and the marriage dissolved, Jack would be safe. I agreed but Jack didn't think it was safe to send me out alone and wanted to go with me. I knew that wouldn’t work. For me to effectively hide I was going to need to keep a low profile and Jack…"
Ianto smiled slightly, "Couldn't keep a low profile even to save his own life?"
"Right," she agreed. "So we did the only thing we could, we dissolved the marriage and the Agency gave Jack a version of retcon. They erased those two years from his memory s from the first moment he met me to that day were gone for him. By the time Jack woke, they had sent me away and they tried to plant new memories for Jack. Most of them didn't work. He knew the time was missing and there was nothing they could do."
"That's why Jack left them. He wanted to find his missing years, he started conning to make money, found the Doctor," Ianto finished. "Yeah, I know that part of the story. Why did you come here now?"
"The Agency sent me. They said they were concerned that Jack might get his memories back and they wanted an agent here to make sure that didn’t happen. Someone that knew him. I was the only one that could do it, the only one that knew him only during those years he didn't remember," she explained. "Then Quinn and Carter-those men you saw the other day-got here and now everything is going wrong. They want to take me back with them and they'll kill Jack to get me to cooperate. Or try to. They obviously don’t realize he won't stay dead. The Agency says they can get me out in a few days and I'm not supposed to tell Jack anything. But Quinn is only giving me three days. I don't know what to do, I don't want any of you hurt but I don’t want to go back either."
"Did Jack-" Ianto started then hesitated. Someone was here to force his friend into a marriage she didn't want-a marriage that was more like slavery from what she was telling him-yet his first thought after her story was that Jack might leave with her if he got his memory back. "Were the two of you in love?"
"No," she answered immediately. "Well, Jack wasn't. Ianto, I have no intention of coming between you and Jack. Jack has certainly moved on, and so have I. He loves you and I'm not interfering with that. If I thought my disappearing right now would stop Quinn, I'd leave. I'd disappear into space somewhere and none of you would ever see me again. But that won't stop him. He'd try to get one or all of you to tell him where I'd gone. He doesn’t want to go back to Cameron empty-handed and he'd kill you all if he thought you were hiding me."
"So what do we do?" Ianto asked. He was going to believe her for now, that she wasn't going to interfere with him and Jack. If she'd wanted to do that she could've done so a long time ago. "How do we stop them?"
"I really don't know," she admitted. "I was sort of hoping you'd be angry and go to Jack and it would all be out of my hands."
"Jack would end up putting himself in danger, we both know that," Ianto frowned. "I'm not sure telling him will solve anything at this point. Really, all we need to do is keep you hidden and safe until the Agency comes for you, right?"
It was Illyana's turn to frown. She hadn't looked at it that way. All she had to do was keep Quinn from taking her until the Agency got there. They would make sure Quinn-and Cameron-were aware they'd stepped in because the last thing they wanted was Jack's memory to return. "Yeah, I guess. Do you have an idea?"
"Nothing concrete," he admitted. "But I think with Owen and Tosh's help we can come up with something that doesn't involve telling Jack any more than absolutely necessary."
"So we tell them?"
"I think so," Ianto answered. "We just need to get Jack out of the Hub for awhile so we can all talk. But for now, I need to run. I've already been gone too long. Jack's going to wonder what's taking so long with picking up pastries and coffee beans."
"I'll head in now then, so that we don't arrive together."
Ianto paid for their meals and a box of pastries and headed toward the shop he normally purchased coffee from. He had no idea how they could hide Illyana without Jack's help if the Time Agency didn't get here before her three days were up. It wasn't as if they could lock her in the cells or keep her at one of their flats. They could possibly try but chances were good that the men looking for her knew who they all were and where they lived. The Hub was the safest place but Jack lived there which made it nearly impossible. He'd have to talk to the others, see if they had any ideas, and find out how much Illyana thought this Quinn guy might know about each of them.
Chapter Four
Author: Shannon
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ianto, OFC, Jack, Jack/Ianto (sort of)
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize belongs to me. They belong to the BBC.
Spoilers: Vague ones maybe from seasons 1 and 2.
Summary: AU. The Time Agency needs Jack to hide someone without his knowledge. The Torchwood team needs to keep her safe. (AU team with no Gwen).
Betas: kitty_poker1, velvetwhip, and elizabuffy.
Author's Notes: This was written for the Support Stacie Author Auction. For Writerreaderstories.
I know I didn't meet all of her request but I sincerely hope I managed to include enough of it to make her happy with it.
Chapter Three
Ianto slid into the seat across from Illyana. They had chosen the small café because neither had much time. Both were needed at work and Ianto had lied to Jack in order to get here anyway. He obviously couldn’t tell Jack he was having breakfast with Illyana because he'd want to join them, so Ianto had offered to run out and pick up pastries for the team, as well as to stop to pick up a fresh supply of coffee beans. That gave him some time out of the Hub without anyone questioning where he was, but not too long.
"You've figured it out, haven't you?" Illyana asked as soon as Ianto was seated. There was no point in beating around the bush. Ianto had been suspicious the moment he'd caught her staring at Quinn and Carter on the street. He was also smart enough to research her background more thoroughly. "How much do you know?"
Ianto was surprised, to say the least, at her immediate confession that there was anything to know. He'd come here expecting her to at least try to deny the phony background. "I know that what Jack found during your original background check is mostly planted information," Ianto offered. "I don't know who you are, why you lied about it, or why you're here."
She took a deep breath. This was her chance, possibly the best option she had. She could tell Ianto everything. Come clean on all of it. He'd go right to Jack-Illyana didn't doubt that-but that would solve her problem with being ordered not to tell Jack anything. She knew she'd still be in some trouble, as they'd never believe she didn't know what Ianto would do, but she could at least plead ignorance and point out that she did not personally trigger Jack's memories which was all she'd really agreed to anyway. Once the truth was out, they'd help her. Jack, Ianto, Tosh, Owen: they'd help keep her safe.
Of course, she couldn’t deny the possibility that this plan could backfire as well. She was telling the man who currently loved Jack very much that she was Jack's wife. Okay, ex-wife as the Agency had dissolved the marriage when they erased Jack's memory. Ianto had shown before he would do whatever he thought necessary to protect someone he loved. He could just as easily decide to turn her over to Quinn and let her disappear without a trace, tell Jack he discovered her phony identity and when confronted she ran, or something. Right now though, it was a risk she was going to have to take; Ianto was still a better option than returning home and being forced into that marriage.
"I'm going to tell you everything," she said. "You aren't going to like some of it-most of it-but I don't know what else to do."
Ianto nodded. He had walked in ready for a fight, ready to threaten to tell Jack, ready to do whatever was necessary to find out who she was. He hadn't been prepared for her to offer the information so quickly or easily. She looked frightened though, her eyes darting all around her as if she thought they were being watched. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth.
*****
"Jack," Tosh called from her desk. "I think I found something on that Rift spike."
"Did you find the cause?" Jack asked, coming down the steps from his office to stand behind her.
"Sorry, no. Well, maybe. I was going through the CCTV of that area from the time of the spike until we left. Looking for something human makes it difficult but look at this." She hit a few buttons on her keyboard and then pointed to the monitor.
"I don't see anything."
"Here." She backed the recording up slightly and pointed again. "Here there's no one on the street. Not a single person near that post. Then just a few seconds later these two men are there. They didn't walk up. They just appeared."
Jack nodded. He saw it now. "Can you freeze that frame?"
Tosh did as he asked and he stared at the monitor for a few more minutes. The men looked familiar, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. Just a nagging feeling he'd seen them before.
"There's more," Tosh said, speeding up the recording to the time marker she wanted him to see next. "I decided to see if I could follow them with CCTV."
"And were you able to?"
"For a while," she confirmed. "And I found this."
She slowed the recording down to normal speed again and pointed to the screen. The two men were walking past Ianto and Illyana and Jack watched as first Illyana and then Ianto turned to watch them. Ianto turned back and said something to Illyana, who was still staring after the men. Jack frowned as he watched the two talking and, not for the first time, wished that CCTV included sound. Ianto had spotted something about the men that grabbed his attention, but it was Illyana's reaction that worried Jack. She looked almost frightened at first and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he should recognize them.
"Do we know who they are?" Jack asked.
"I'm running the recognition program now but I don't think so," Tosh said. "It does seem like Illyana knew them though. Maybe we should ask her?"
Jack frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to do that, not yet. He'd talk to Ianto first, find out what had happened that night and why neither had mentioned it. "Not yet. Just keep this between us for now, okay?"
"Sure."
*****
"I'm from the 51st century," Illyana began. "I'm a Time Agent."
"Like Jack and Hart?" Ianto asked. He briefly wondered when his life had gotten so strange that the words 'I'm from the future' didn't seem at all unbelievable to him.
"Yeah. It might be best if you let me tell you all of this and then you ask questions," she answered. When Ianto nodded his agreement, she continued. "Several years ago I was given an undercover assignment to stop this smuggling ring. The details don't really matter, other than the head of the ring decided he….liked me. That worked for us for a while-as his girlfriend I had access to things I wouldn't have as an employee."
Illyana offered a small smile when Ianto nodded his understanding. She was trying to decide how much was safe to tell him. She wanted him to know enough that she'd get the help she needed, but too much and she'd be making him a target; she didn't want to do that either, so she had to tread carefully.
"Then things…changed. I don't know if he suspected me as an agent or if he was serious, but he wanted to get married. I couldn't do that, for obvious reasons, and because he was already treating me almost as property. Imagine how much worse it would be if I were married to him. I turned him down and he didn't take it well at all. He became convinced it was because of another man, that there was someone I preferred over him. I was frightened. He wasn't the most emotionally stable man you've ever met."
Ianto remained silent as she told her story. He was definitely curious now. Was she hiding here? Had the Time Agency sent her? Had Jack been part of hiding her here? Did he already know about her past? Was Ianto wasting his time looking into this at all?
"It wasn't safe for me to wear my vortex manipulator, or even have it with me while undercover, so they always set up meetings for me to report in. Not long after I turned down the marriage proposal I had to report in and the Agency sent Jack to take the report."
"I had never met Jack before that day but I knew him by reputation. I told him everything that had happened. That I was frightened. Before I had even finished my report we were attacked. I had been followed."
Illyana stopped talking again. This was where she'd be telling Ianto the things he wasn't going to like. She had to hope that she could convince Ianto that she had no intention of interfering with him and Jack. Jack had never loved her; she knew that. Those feelings had all been one-sided. Jack was being Jack and doing what was necessary to keep her safe.
"There wasn't much we could do. The Agency wasn't going to help us-they aren't like government agencies in this time. They weren't going to risk exposure to save us, so we ran. We hid for a while but they kept coming after us. We kept running and moving and trying to stay one step ahead. Jack promised he'd keep me safe, and he kept trying to contact the Agency for help. Then one day he decided that the easiest way to stop Cameron from marrying me was if I was already married."
"You're married to Jack?" Ianto interrupted. He'd tried to listen quietly to the story and he had intended to keep his questions to himself until she finished but he knew where this was going now. Why couldn’t Jack's past stay in the future where it belonged? When she nodded a confirmation, he asked, "So he's hiding you here, now?"
"We aren't married anymore, though I am hiding here," she explained. "But Jack isn't hiding me, not consciously anyway. He has no idea who I am anymore."
Ianto raised an eyebrow in question. It didn't make any sense. How could Jack not know?
"We got married, but we still had to keep running," she continued. "It didn't stop anything. He had just upped the game. Now he wanted Jack dead. Eventually the Agency did step in. They found us and brought us in. They couldn’t stop Cameron and our cover was blown anyway. They wanted to move me to work in a different time, put me on a different case somewhere Cameron's men would never find me. They had said Jack would be fine on his own. Once I was out of the picture and the marriage dissolved, Jack would be safe. I agreed but Jack didn't think it was safe to send me out alone and wanted to go with me. I knew that wouldn’t work. For me to effectively hide I was going to need to keep a low profile and Jack…"
Ianto smiled slightly, "Couldn't keep a low profile even to save his own life?"
"Right," she agreed. "So we did the only thing we could, we dissolved the marriage and the Agency gave Jack a version of retcon. They erased those two years from his memory s from the first moment he met me to that day were gone for him. By the time Jack woke, they had sent me away and they tried to plant new memories for Jack. Most of them didn't work. He knew the time was missing and there was nothing they could do."
"That's why Jack left them. He wanted to find his missing years, he started conning to make money, found the Doctor," Ianto finished. "Yeah, I know that part of the story. Why did you come here now?"
"The Agency sent me. They said they were concerned that Jack might get his memories back and they wanted an agent here to make sure that didn’t happen. Someone that knew him. I was the only one that could do it, the only one that knew him only during those years he didn't remember," she explained. "Then Quinn and Carter-those men you saw the other day-got here and now everything is going wrong. They want to take me back with them and they'll kill Jack to get me to cooperate. Or try to. They obviously don’t realize he won't stay dead. The Agency says they can get me out in a few days and I'm not supposed to tell Jack anything. But Quinn is only giving me three days. I don't know what to do, I don't want any of you hurt but I don’t want to go back either."
"Did Jack-" Ianto started then hesitated. Someone was here to force his friend into a marriage she didn't want-a marriage that was more like slavery from what she was telling him-yet his first thought after her story was that Jack might leave with her if he got his memory back. "Were the two of you in love?"
"No," she answered immediately. "Well, Jack wasn't. Ianto, I have no intention of coming between you and Jack. Jack has certainly moved on, and so have I. He loves you and I'm not interfering with that. If I thought my disappearing right now would stop Quinn, I'd leave. I'd disappear into space somewhere and none of you would ever see me again. But that won't stop him. He'd try to get one or all of you to tell him where I'd gone. He doesn’t want to go back to Cameron empty-handed and he'd kill you all if he thought you were hiding me."
"So what do we do?" Ianto asked. He was going to believe her for now, that she wasn't going to interfere with him and Jack. If she'd wanted to do that she could've done so a long time ago. "How do we stop them?"
"I really don't know," she admitted. "I was sort of hoping you'd be angry and go to Jack and it would all be out of my hands."
"Jack would end up putting himself in danger, we both know that," Ianto frowned. "I'm not sure telling him will solve anything at this point. Really, all we need to do is keep you hidden and safe until the Agency comes for you, right?"
It was Illyana's turn to frown. She hadn't looked at it that way. All she had to do was keep Quinn from taking her until the Agency got there. They would make sure Quinn-and Cameron-were aware they'd stepped in because the last thing they wanted was Jack's memory to return. "Yeah, I guess. Do you have an idea?"
"Nothing concrete," he admitted. "But I think with Owen and Tosh's help we can come up with something that doesn't involve telling Jack any more than absolutely necessary."
"So we tell them?"
"I think so," Ianto answered. "We just need to get Jack out of the Hub for awhile so we can all talk. But for now, I need to run. I've already been gone too long. Jack's going to wonder what's taking so long with picking up pastries and coffee beans."
"I'll head in now then, so that we don't arrive together."
Ianto paid for their meals and a box of pastries and headed toward the shop he normally purchased coffee from. He had no idea how they could hide Illyana without Jack's help if the Time Agency didn't get here before her three days were up. It wasn't as if they could lock her in the cells or keep her at one of their flats. They could possibly try but chances were good that the men looking for her knew who they all were and where they lived. The Hub was the safest place but Jack lived there which made it nearly impossible. He'd have to talk to the others, see if they had any ideas, and find out how much Illyana thought this Quinn guy might know about each of them.
Chapter Four