Forgiven - 8/9
At ten minutes to midnight, Jack and Ianto were inching their way towards the UNIT safehouse, making sure to stay in the shadows and away from as many CCTV cameras as possible. They were about twenty meters from the building’s back entrance when they were finally approached by a UNIT soldier.
“Excuse me, Sirs, but I’m afraid it’s past curfew. You’ll have to return to your rooms,” the young man said.
“Oh, sorry,” Jack said. “We’ll go back in a sec. Jones here needed a bit of air.”
“Air, Sir?” the soldier asked. He knew the tales of Captain Harkness, and he was pretty sure the last thing the man was thinking about while skulking around in the dark with a rather attractive colleague was getting a bit of air.
Jack put an arm on the soldier’s shoulder and pulled him slightly away from Ianto. He whispered, “Lived in London for a while, got used to the fancy food. The stuff here’s not gone down well. Honestly, he’s a bit of a priss.”
The soldier took a step back and looked at the young man in the three piece suit. He nodded and said, “I understand, Sir. Many of the new recruits go through something similar in their first week. They’re used to mum’s homecooking. I suggest a walk down by the pond; the cool breeze may help.”
“Thanks, Private,” Jack said smiling. “Come on, Jones. It’s about time you learned to buck up.” Ianto scowled but joined him. They parted company with the soldier and continued on their way to the safehouse.
As they rounded the final corner and stood in the shadows not five meters from the safehouse door, Ianto hissed, “I am not a priss!”
Jack chuckled. “Says the man breaking into a UNIT safehouse in a black pinstripe suit.”
“Pot and Kettle, Sir. I know what you’re like when the greatcoat rips.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “So, Ianto, what d’you think the chances are that this is a trap?”
“Seriously, Sir?! You’re the one who authorized the mission. We’re five meters from the door and now you get cold feet?”
“Oh calm down,” Jack harrumphed. “Let’s go then.”
They walked quickly and silently to the door. Standing there, Jack decided to be chivalrous. “After you, Mr. Jones,” he said, bowing towards the door.
“Actually, Sir, you should go first.”
“Age before beauty, eh?”
“Not at all, Sir. Simply practicality.”
“Practicality?”
“If it is a trap and someone is standing there with a gun pointed at the door, you should go first.”
“Look, Ianto, I thought we we’re past the whole ‘watch you suffer and die’ fetish.”
“And we are. But you can come back from the dead, Sir. I don’t have that luxury. And if it is a trap, I’d like the opportunity to say I told you so. And that’s a bit difficult to do if I’m dead.”
Jack stood there, staring at Ianto who remained stock still, watching him. Jack shook his head and opened the door, Ianto stepping back to remain behind him.
As Jack turned the handle, he whispered, “It’s unlocked. Guess he was telling the truth about that part.”
“May I remind you about the saying about counting your eggs?” Ianto hissed back.
“Oh relax! I’m going in. You stay out here till I say it’s clear.”
As Jack entered the safehouse, he looked around, taking in the various possible emergency exits and hiding places. He softly closed the door, leaving it open a half inch or so. He moved slowly forward, not making a sound, keeping his Webley at the ready.
The room was cavernous, much larger on the inside that it looked on the outside. The ceiling was two floors high, but the room was completely open. Row after row of wooden, marked boxes were piled in perfectly straight rows and a metal gantry surrounded the room higher up. Lights hung from the ceiling, though only every other one was lit, shrouding the room in hints of light and dark. Walking down the center aisle and keeping an eye out, he began to turn back to fetch Ianto.
“Stay where you are, Captain Harkness,” Frank Parsons commanded, now standing between Jack and the back door, aiming his pistol at the Captain.
“Hiya Frankie. What’s going on?” Jack asked, smiling.
“Where is Mr. Jones, Captain?” Frank growled.
“Outside. Keeping watch.”
Frank let out a long breath. “Good. That’s good. He’s a good man. I wouldn’t want him to see this.”
“Why not, Frankie? Whatcha got planned?”
“Lower your weapon, Captain, before I put a bullet in your brain.”
“Aww come on now. That’s no way to treat a friend.”
“You and I are not friends.” Frank inched closer. “Put. Down. The gun.”
“Okay, okay,” Jack said. He lowered the Webley and dropped it on the concrete floor. Raising his hands, he asked, “Wanna tell me what this is all about?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Frank said, walking over to the Webley and kicking it away, his pistol never wavering. In his hand he held a small recording device.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that part out, Frank. Now I’ve done lots of stuff that I deserve to be killed for, but I have no idea what I did to you.”
“Not to me! To them! All of them! It was your fault!” Frank hissed.
“Yeah, probably,” Jack shrugged. “Like I said, there’s not much in my life I’m proud of. What’d I do this time?”
“Canary Warf.”
Jack looked at Frank in confusion. “How the hell is Canary Warf my fault?”
“Where were you, eh? While it was happening, while they were bleeding and fighting and dying, where were you?”
“In Cardiff,” Jack answered slowly.
“Exactly!”
“Ooookayyyy Frank. You’re gonna have to give me more than that.”
“You could have stopped them. You could have helped. But no! The Great Captain Jack Fucking Harkness locks his team in his underground base and hides! You let the cybermen kill everyone and you hid!”
“Frank, there was nothing I could do. I tried everything, but if we left the base we’d have been killed instantly.”
“You sanctimonious prick! You were scared! Admit it, you were scared and you hid and you let it happen! God forbid you or your team get hurt. Oh no, London can fall. London deserves it, but not Cardiff! Never Cardiff! My brother is lying in a bed in Providence Park because he thinks the nurses are cybermen coming to upgrade him! You could have helped! Admit that it’s your fault so I can kill you!” Frank screamed, turning the recording device on.
“No, Frank. It’s not his fault,” Ianto’s voice came from up on the gantry. It would have been comical, Ianto later mused, had the situation not been so sad. Here was a man threatening to kill another man who couldn’t die. Talk about a no-win situation.
“Mr. Jones?” Frank asked, his head whipping up in Ianto’s direction. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be outside. I didn’t want you to see this.”
“I know, Frank. But I can’t let you do this. Put the gun down. Put it down and no one will know. We won’t tell anyone, you won’t get in trouble.” Ianto slowly raised his pistol in Frank’s direction. “Please, Frank, put it down.”
“How’d you get up there?” Parsons asked, still a bit confused.
“Fire escape. Figured it was a trap when Jack didn’t come out,” Ianto shrugged. “Now put the gun down.”
Frank gestured to Jack with his other hand, still training his pistol on Jack. “I can’t. He has to admit his guilt. He has to. Then I have to kill him for what he did.”
“He made the right choice. He had to keep the team safe. They wouldn’t have survived if they came up, and they wouldn’t have been able to get to London in time to do anything.”
“No! He could have done something! Anything! But he did nothing! Tom’s dead and it’s all his fault!” Frank screamed.
“Tom’s not dead. He’s alive, Frank. You told me that. Now let Jack go,” Ianto pleaded.
“He is dead! As good as! He’s not Tom anymore. My big brother, my hero, is dead! You don’t know what that’s like!”
“I do!” Ianto bellowed. “I lost everyone that day! Tad, my step-mam, my friends, my co-workers, my girlfriend! I watched my girlfriend get converted! I know what it’s like and I’m telling you it’s not Jack’s fault!”
“But he’s the only one left. The only one I can blame,” Frank whispered.
“No, Frank. He’s not. I’m here. I’m more to blame than him. I was in London, I saw the ghosts. If you want to blame someone, blame me, not Jack.”
“No! You’re lying to me, just trying to trick me into letting him go!” Now Frank’s arm began to waver. Jack switched between watching the pistol and watching Ianto. As long as the gun was trained on him alone, knowing he couldn’t die gave him a certain ease in that others wouldn’t have felt. For him, it was less like watching his life flash before his eyes, and more like watching how a suddenly very interesting movie was going to play out. Popcorn would have been nice, though. Adds a sort of domesticity to the situation.
“I’m not lying. Everything I’ve said is the truth,” Ianto stated, his eyes on Frank but surreptitiously on Jack. Jack was convinced that Ianto was trying to tell him something. Jack’d be damned if he could figure it out, though.
“No!” Frank yelled. “You…you did lie! You got out with the others! You couldn't watch your girlfriend! That’s a lie!”
“No, Frank, it’s not,” Ianto replied, shaking his head.
“Tell me the fucking truth! You couldn’t have watched her get converted if you got out!”
Ohhh…Now it’s really getting interesting, Jack thought.
“If I tell you the truth, will you let Jack go?” Ianto asked.
Frank looked back and forth between Ianto and Jack. His anger at Torchwood warred with his implicit trust of the man he had come to think of as a hero and a guardian angel. He nodded.
Ianto smiled and lowered his gun. “After we got out, I made the others hide in some rubble. I went back in. I had to find my Lisa, had to make sure she got out. I went back up through the South stairwell. Lisa’s office was on the second highest floor, but I was caught by the…by them, before I could get there. They…they took me to a conversion room. I…”
Ianto’s voice caught. Not once hand he raised his voice or showed any emotion, relaying his story with a coldness that kept Jack and Frank mesmerized. It was only now, when Ianto had trouble continuing, that Jack realized how much this recitation was costing him. Jack could just about make out the shaking in Ianto’s arms.
“Ianto?” he called softly. That seemed to break Ianto out of his reverie, as well as get Frank’s attention back on him. Frank re-aimed his pistol, straightening his arm as he waited for Ianto to continue. Ianto grimaced.
“Sorry,” he said. “It gets a bit…difficult…from here on.” Jack smiled gently.
“Right. Anyway. They brought me to a conversion room. About the same size as this safehouse, actually. Conversion units lined the walls. They cuffed my hands and ankles to the machine. I couldn’t move. All I could do was turn my head. That’s when I saw her. My Lisa, cuffed to a machine three machines down and across the room from me. I was in the last one. Everyone was screaming. I tried to talk to her, to tell her it would be alright but she couldn’t hear me. So we just stared at each other. It was the only thing I could do.”
Ianto looked down and took a long, shuddering breath. Keeping his eyes on the gantry’s metal floor, he continued. “The…they turned the machines on. But the machines used too much power so they could only turn a few on at a time. They started at the other end. We could hear the knives coming down. And the screams, the screams never stopped. You could smell the flesh when the metal hit it. It burned the flesh. Smelled like a barbeque…or…I don’t know…something. You could hear the screams get closer as the next machines were turned on. Then they turned on Lisa’s. I had to keep watching. I couldn’t help her, I couldn’t do anything!” To Jack’s ears, Ianto seemed to be pleading for forgiveness.
“I had to keep watching her. She shouldn’t have to go through it alone. I watched as it…as they….as the knives…as they pulled off skin and as the metal…And then they just stopped. Everything stopped. The whole world stopped then. The knives retracted, there were streams of blood on the floor. Her blood, their blood. So much blood. Then the cybermen…I don’t know. They seemed to fly or something. They were pulled up into the air and then it was like something was pulling them out of the room. One of them hit the unit I was in and knocked it over. My restraints broke open. I…I couldn’t move. I just lay there, covered in someone’s blood, watching Lisa. I couldn’t hear anything. She was screaming, saying something, but I couldn’t hear her. If it was only a few minutes sooner, if whatever the Doctor did was just a few minutes….”
Ianto couldn’t go on. He dropped the pistol and wrapped his arms around himself. Jack and Frank just continued to stare at him, enthralled and mesmerized by what he had told them. For a moment, neither men breathed. So entranced were they that they didn’t notice the armed squad of UNIT soldiers silently snaking their way through the aisles of boxes.
Frank jumped as he felt the familiar cool metal of a gun against the back of his head. “Drop your weapon, Mr. Parsons. As head of UNIT, I am placing you under arrest for conspiracy, espionage, and attempted murder.” Frank complied, his pistol clattering on the concrete floor. Colonel Mace smiled grimly. “Turn around, Mr. Parsons and place your hands behind your head.”
As a UNIT soldier handcuffed Frank and led him away, Mace turned to Jack.
“Thanks, Colonel,” Jack said quietly. He still hadn’t gotten over Ianto’s recitation.
“Don’t thank me yet, Captain. I’m also placing you under arrest for espionage and attempted theft of UNIT equipment.”
“What?! But we didn’t actually steal anything! And besides, you can’t arrest Torchwood! We’re above-“
“Yes, I know the line. Above the police, beyond the law, et cetera. You may answer only to the Queen, Captain, but UNIT answers to the UN Security Council. We’re a bit higher up than you. Place your hands behind your back before I shoot you.” Jack also complied.
Mace looked up at Ianto, still standing silently on the gantry. “Mr. Jones? I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you as well, for conspiracy. If you’ll come down?”
“Of course, Colonel. And thank you for your assistance with Mr. Parsons. May I ask a favor, as a professional courtesy?”
Mace raised an eyebrow. Even Jack was surprised at Ianto’s attempt to ask for favors while being under arrest. Still, at least he was polite about the whole thing.
“As you will be undoubtedly confining both the Captain and myself for some time, I would like to contact our people in Cardiff to let them know. They deserve to be told, so that they don’t worry.”
Mace tilted his head, considering the request. “As a professional courtesy from a member of Torchwood who tried to steal something from under my nose, no, I shall not grant your request. As a professional courtesy for a survivor of Canary Warf, however, you may do so. I’ll even grant you the use of my office so that you may make your call in private.”
Ianto nodded his thanks and walked to the stairs at the end of the gantry. When he reached the bottom, he placed his hands behind his back. He didn’t struggle or make a sound of protest when a UNIT soldier cuffed him and led him away.