Fanfic - Counting Stars Extras [Torchwood: Jack/Ianto]
Story Notes
aka all the random stuff I wanted to tell you about
Part 1:
Myfanwy: I HAD TO.
Look, the pteranodon has that big, long crest, right? That means male, and given the size, nearly an adult. Really. Go look it up.
Of course, he/she/it was never actually named in the show (Myfanwy was a name given by the actors on set, right?) Oh well. Chance for a quick, cute, Ianto-knows-everything-and-thinks-you’re-all-idiots moment.
Rhiannon and family: What’s her daughter’s name? Mica? Mischa? I went with Mischa purely because I like that spelling, but I’m aware it’s likely wrong. Oh well. I messed with Ianto’s family enough - what’s another alteration?
The scrapbook: The pictures in the book Jack gives Ianto? I’m imagining he had some stuff recorded in his Wristband of 133tdom. Seriously, that thing can do anything. Anyways, the Jack in my head took those recordings as a sort of morbid record of what he’s survived, and he’s taking pictures of those recordings now for Ianto’s scrapbook.
Ianto’s responsibilities: Sorry, not buying the “gets us everywhere on time” thing. General support for Torchwood has to be a hell of a lot more than with any other organisation, and I rather imagine that at this point, Ianto had all the dirty work dumped on him (new guy and all). With him trying to hide Lisa, he wouldn’t have complained, so he really is doing more than he should be here.
Ianto and the greatcoat: Okay. Yes. Kink of mine, I’ll admit it. There’s something very sexy about valet!Ianto. Or butler!Ianto. Or personal steward!Ianto. Mmmm.
Cannibals: … I had to share this conversation:
amsdia says:
i wonder what would happen if jack got eaten by something?
areale says:
....... gosh, you're right
amsdia says:
so, any theories on what would happen? *laughs*
areale says:
hahaah
well bits of him would actually be digested and sent into the animal's blood system
and you know, actually form a part of that animal
amsdia says:
ewwwww
would that make the animal immortal?
HEY what if those cannibals had tried eating jack?
like, turned him into a meat patty or something
*muses*
"EVAN MY BURGER IS MOVING!"
......
wow, that's a very disturbing mental image.
areale says:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I Am Not A Burger. My Name Is Jack. That's Captain Harkness To You. PREPARE TO DIE.
amsdia says:
ohgod
*collapses in laughter*
little army of burgers and meatballs!
areale says:
ahahahahah
A SMARTMOUTHED BURGER
"why do you need FRIES? you don't need FRIES when you have ME."
amsdia says:
oh GOD i can actually see burger!jack saying that
areale says:
HAHAHAHA CAN'T YOU
amsdia says:
brings new meaning to ianto eating jack up
*chortles to self*
areale says:
"oh, ianto. that's right. some things don't change, eh? mmmmm."
amsdia says:
THANKS AREALE
*just spit out her h2o*
areale says:
HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH
amsdia says:
you evil little sadist
So, if eating certain parts of Jack make you immortal (and assuming Jack has practiced safe sex since he got pregnant so no other immortals are running around)… would Ianto become immortal if he gave Jack an unprotected blowjob (and swallowed)?
…Is immortality an STD?
Part Two:
The Waves: … I had to! I adore this book. You should all read it. ♥
Deep Thought: The first of many references to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Deep Thought was the second-most intelligent computer ever. It gave the answer to life, the universe and everything - 42, as it turns out. Which led to a mad scramble to invent a more intelligent computer that could tell them what the question was.
Misty: She’s there for a reason, yes. She’s companionship for Ianto, and a constant reminder that not all aliens are threats. And later, when she dies, she’s a timely reminder of mortality to both Ianto and Jack.
Random factoid - she’s named after my imaginary golden retriever.
Also, I want a Vixmextis.
From stopwatch to betrayal: For me, a big part of Ianto’s nature is that he’s loyal, maybe to a fault. There needed to be something big to get him from his whole “Jack could be my something new to focus on” to his betrayal of Jack in opening the Rift in 1x13. I decided that the trigger would be his realisation that he hadn’t managed to keep their relationship solely physical after all, coupled with the belief that Jack would not return his feelings (‘proven’ when Tosh reveals Jack’s thing with real!Jack). That drove Ianto’s desperation to get back the one person he thought understood him.
Part Three:
Formatting: You have no idea how nervous I was about this; apparently it worked! I wanted the form of this part to illustrate the idea that things had turned upside down for a while before sliding back into place.
The Sound of Drums: According to the BBC website and Owen’s “report” on the Himalayas, they went out because they were told there was Rift activity there, possibly related to the whole Abaddon deal. I don’t buy it. If there was, their own scanners would have picked it up and the decision would have been theirs, not Saxon’s. Theoretically, Saxon could have manufactured the whole thing, but that doesn’t explain why they went at Saxon’s behest. My explanation? 1) Gwen answered, and she’s not used to dealing with politicos. 2) The sound of drums. Even Martha and Jack were taken in by that. They’d have voted for Saxon, remember?
Ianto’s survival: I hope that Ianto’s ability to survive nearly to the end of the regime was explainable. He spent a number of months in the Hub doing nothing but studying these creatures. They’re portrayed as being child-like and therefore erratic in their behaviour - but even children display patterns, and given enough time, I think Ianto could have found those patterns. Also, his main priority is helping to keep people alive, not engaging the Toclafane. In other words, he’s staying the hell out of their way and running when they find him, not trying to fight them.
Stun guns and the Toclafane: Remember the one Martha and co. were poking? The one that had been zapped by lightning? These modified stun guns don’t quite have the punch of a lightning bolt, but I reckon they’d at least slow down the Toclafane. Kind of an ‘ow, that stung!’ moment to buy Ianto/Martha/whoever time to get away.
Ianto’s telepathy: Hopefully there’d been enough hints (some rather unsubtle ones) by this point, so it didn’t come out of thin air?
Ianto and Jack: What does Jack’s reaction to Ianto mean? Honestly, any number of things. The thing I’d like to point out here is that we don’t know what’s been happening to Jack. Torture, yes. But what, specifically? What’s he been thinking of? Why’s he been thinking of Ianto? What conclusions has he come to about his life, desires, whatever? Depending on those answers… 1) his response to Ianto (the quick recovery) could make more sense but also 2) how complete is the recovery anyway, and how much is acting?
Resetting the world: Again, the series was too clean and neat. Plenty happened before the machine was started (i.e. the point it rewound to) that should have caused lots of chaos. I had to fudge the times a little so things made more sense.
Also, surely there were more people on the Valiant than the Doctor, Jack, Martha and her family? I’m thinking they were all liberally Retconned and dumped - just that, obviously, Ianto wouldn’t have known all this. I rather fancy writing a story about Jack dealing with that, actually.
Hm.
……
*beats off rabid plotbunnies*
Part Four:
Gwen in charge: I think the writers were slightly idiotic here. Gwen’s the newbie with comparatively little experience. Countrycide proved Tosh kind of gets a kick out of fieldwork, but she probably would fall down in asserting herself. In that respect, Owen or Gwen would be better. Between those two, Owen has more experience, so he’s the logical choice. Naturally, that means the writers choose Gwen instead.
My explanation is that Owen is an ornery bastard who doesn’t want extra work, and so he decides to share responsibilities with Gwen. The day Jack got back happened to be a leader!Gwen day, that’s all.
MarvinMeredydd: Second HHGG reference! Marvin was a very melancholic robot with a penchant for lamenting the generally sorry state of his life at every any given moment.
Hiring Gwen: CoE (which I’m generally pretending never existed) reveals in Day 1 that Jack and Ianto were being Very Sneaky when they lured Gwen in to join Torchwood. Everything Changes implies that the whole thing was more up to chance than anything else (“Hey, now that Suzie’s killed herself and you’ve broken the Retcon, why not come work for me?”), but I like to think that Torchwood’s just slightly more organised than that. Jack, in my fic-verse, was always planning on hiring Gwen. He just wound up using her to replace Suzie instead of his original plan of adding an extra member.
Gwen, the Conscience: This is what she’s described as being by Certain People responsible for Torchwood.
……
HAHAHAHAHA.
Look, Ianto’s view of Gwen here, and in the fic in general, is my view of Gwen. And I’ll stop flogging that dead horse now.
Part Five:
Falling off a building: s = ut + 0.5at2
s = distance travelled = 200 feet = 60.96 m
u = initial speed = 0 m/s
t = time
a = acceleration constant = 9.81 m/s
60.96 = 0 + 0.5(9.81)t2
t = 3.525 s
Injuries: I love how people keep getting injured on Torchwood, and then they’re mysteriously better by the next episode, no lasting effects etcetera! I mean, it’s obvious with Jack, but the others? Oh, medical impossibilities, you amuse me so.
Q&A: I know, I know, horrible cliché. That’s why I decided to use it. Ianto sees it as the only way he’ll get answers. Jack sees it as a step forward in making Ianto realise that he wants more now. They’ve got Hidden Agendas, and neither of them is being completely honest to begin with. By the end, they’re hopefully realising that the world won’t implode if they’re honest, but it’ll take time for that fledgling realisation to really go anywhere.
Part Six:
The operetta: It’s never specifically mentioned, aside from a character name or two, but the operetta they’re watching is Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers. It’s an absolute gem of opera. The version I had in mind while writing this was the one at Lyon in 1997 (it’s on DVD). There are a few clips on Youtube you can watch:
This one’s near the beginning
and it leads directly into this.
Another little point to note is that this is the operetta which gave us the Infernal Galop, more familiarly known to us today as the tune to the can-can. It closes the operetta, as you can see here.
Also, everything Jack says about the role of opera in the past is true. People went to the opera to socialise. They ate, talked, moved around a lot, snuck out before the end to hit the brothels and otherwise did a lot of things that would now get them banned forever.
… Don’t try any of these at an opera today.
Broadway!Jack: Think of him as channelling John Barrowman. After all, there’s a lot of John Barrowman in Captain Jack. (And a lot of Ianto in Jack!) [/innuendo]
Ford Prefect: Another teeny-tiny HHGG reference!
Dinner: Pretty much all the food is supposedly aphrodisiacal in nature, or is traditionally associated with male fertility.
Jack, Ianto and Tosh: Why does Jack suddenly shut down when he finds out about Ianto and Tosh’s meetings?
“…Complain about Owen, talk about the top ten places we’d like to see before we die, she’s helping me with my Japanese pronunciation -”
“You speak Japanese?” Jack asked in evident surprise.
Two things there. 1) Jack didn’t know this about Ianto. He’s annoyed at himself for not trying to learn more about his lover. And 2) “before we die” is just reminding Jack that Ianto - well, will. (Or not, but whatever.)
Part Seven:
Alien jellyfish: Credit for this goes to my lovely friend and beta, Areale. She’s tolerated a lot while this fic gestated, hatched, then ate my brain. She also invented the alien jellyfish and their pneumatic bubble-producing system. She wanted Ianto to blow into a U-tube to communicate with them (oh, the mental images), but it was honestly too difficult to work in, so I changed that to Morse code instead. So they’re a little behind the times!
I also really wanted to mention Turritopsis nutricula - immortal jellyfish, dontcha know - if only as Ianto’s little joke to Jack - but I wasn’t able to work it in. Oh well.
Mini-Captain: And his two lieutenants. Taken from the Captain’s Blog. Oh, Jack.
Work to do: Because I never understood Jack’s “Work to do” in Adrift. Is he fooling anyone? Not if it had been meant as a “Let me hide what we were just doing and are about to get back to” way - but if it was a little inside joke, then it made more sense. So. Setting that up here. Just watch out for paper-cuts in uncomfortable places, Jack.
Part Eight:
The jellies and Morse code: In order, each of those Morse code words are: Coral, Yay, and (later on when Ianto and Jason are moving them) Moving.
Ianto’s diary: Some lines in that entry were taken from the Adam episode, as well as from the The Dead Line radio play.
Part Nine:
Telepathy and empathy: Yep, so Ianto has them in spades. Yep, Ianto’s human. I figure the evolution’s got to start somewhere, right? Besides, Torchwood London’s psychic training regime is canon (I think. Or is that fanon?), so it’s entirely possible Ianto has been able to figure a fair bit out.
That said, he’s got the potential, but he’s nowhere near being able to properly utilise that potential. Jack and Callista will be able to help him with that - Jack by showing him what to do and Callista simply by getting him used to contacting a purely telepathic creature.
Which, naturally, comes in useful later when he starts dealing with the Weevils.
Adopting aliens: The radio play Asylum implied that Torchwood’s policy is just to wipe out whatever aliens come their way - until, in that play, they finally start offering asylum to the harmless ones. I don’t buy it. Jack’s done a lot to turn Torchwood around. He quite obviously detests the old Torchwood policies of killing any and all aliens. He was badly affected by that young blowfish’s death, back on his first assignment. He might have sucked it up and worked for them while waiting for the Doctor, but that doesn’t mean he’d have liked what they were doing. And he did make a lot of changes the moment he took over Three - like moving the Rift victims to Flat Holm instead of keeping them in cells. I refuse to believe he wouldn’t have a similar system set up for displaced aliens.
Now, Flat Holm revealed that obviously there are a few other people in the know about some Torchwood stuff. My theory is that the main Torchwood team - the five we see - are the ones who do all the running around after aliens and all, but Jack’s got small teams he trusts to look after the safe-houses. Of course, he keeps a close eye on them to make sure nothing leaks out that shouldn’t… and to jump the gun, that’s why I suggested in the fic that Helen (in Adrift) was new. She didn’t quite make the grade. I suspect she’d have been Retconned and sent back to whatever job she came from, because, really, Gwen got in far too easily.
Part Ten:
Telekinesis: Ianto doesn’t have it. He was just lucky. But that conversation is a dig at Ianto’s Amazing Abilities. Sure, he’s talented, and sure, he can do a couple things that most humans can’t… but he’s not capable of everything.
Cawl: Is yummy. I’ve made it myself - I’m not Welsh and I, like Jack, cheated, so I wouldn’t presume to call it authentic. It was still yummy.
Baking: Oh, lookit. Another thing Ianto can’t do. I don’t understand how people can mess up simple baking, but it’s evidently possible.
Eyebrows: Tosh is right. Have you ever noticed how eloquent Jack’s and Ianto’s eyebrows are?
Owen: Is he a bastard? Well, sometimes, but in this particular instance… the question might be, is he jealous? I don’t mean that he’s in love with Jack and/or Ianto - but I do think that he’s jealous of love itself. Maybe because he doesn’t see it as something he’ll ever find again/be able to keep.
Part Eleven:
Ueuecoyotl: Aztec god of sex. Yeah, that’s really all you need to know.
Martha: The email from her was lifted verbatim from the BBC site (Jack’s inbox). Some of the subsequent conversation was taken from the same site (Jack and Ianto’s emails to and fro about booking her in etc).
End of the World Survivor’s Club: … Because when Jack said it in the show, it was like he was channelling Ianto.
Braaaaains: Just randomly… it really is hard to get brain matter out of walls/flooring/fabric etc. Much worse than blood.
Part Twelve:
Ianto’s father and grandfather: I’m pretending CoE never existed. Still, this is my response to CoE’s fucking with Ianto’s back-story. It dovetails quite nicely with my Ianto-does-not-like-his-father thing in this fic-verse.
Part Thirteen:
Spock: Referring to the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock (second and third Star Trek movies). Spock dies at the end of Khan and leaves his katra (kind of like his soul/essence) in Bones, who was the only one he trusted who was close enough (Jim wasn’t there, so it had to be Bones). As it turns out, Spock’s body is Not Quite Dead, so they’ve got a live body without a Spock-y essence, and a Spock-y essence floating around in Bones’ head (he really wants the green-blooded hobgoblin out, thankyouverymuch) so they head on to Vulcan and manage to stick the two together and voilà! Spock’s back!
Also, Kirk in the original Star Trek (which is the only one I’ve ever watched) has a remarkable tendency to lose his shirt in every. Single. Fight. He gets into. And sometimes, even when he’s not fighting!
And Jack’s finally figured out why Rose called the Doctor Spock, back when they first met.
Ianto’s family: Yes, yes, all invented save for Rhiannon and her lot. So what? I did warn you!
Ianto being seen with Jack: Oh, I couldn’t help it. CoE reference there, but I like to think of this as CoE’s happy twin. *grins*
Part Fourteen:
Having kids: Nothing against having kids, if that’s what you like. But I don’t personally think Jack and Ianto would want them (argument for another time). In that vein, do Alice and Steven exist in this fic-verse? Answer: No. *waves goodbye*
Possible faerie sighting: Why? Because according to the timeline I worked up (yes, I did have to fudge some numbers), there’s a great big gaping space between these two episodes. I wanted to have a sort of mini-episode between them. At the same time, it had to be something that developed Ianto in some way, so I started thinking - what if Ianto had a more active role here than he usually does, and basically solved the case? Then I got to thinking about Ianto’s and Jack’s reactions to the Night Travellers and the faeries, and I decided I wanted something that wasn’t alien - something that was probably from Earth, but inexplicable. This is what I came up with. There’s more on the pelesit in my notes on the next part.
Boggarts and brownies: A Boggart is a malevolent spirit that attaches itself to a particular family and wreaks havoc. Hanging a horseshoe on your front door keeps it away. A brownie is also a household spirit, but these are friendly ones - they do chores when no one else is around in exchange for food.
Tynged: You might better know it by the Irish term - the geis, or geas. In ultra-simplified terms, it’s a kind of curse - but not always bad. It’s more like a taboo, or a vow to do (or not do) a certain set of things. Breaking it has Dire Consequences, but if you keep it, you’re very often granted great power. In Welsh lore, the most famous story involving a tynged is probably that of Lleu Llaw Gyffes.
Siti Binte Abdul: This name is a little joke. Torchwood/Doctor Who has a tendency to use fairly common names, sometimes deliberately - like the Doctor using John Smith as an alias. And Ianto's name, for that matter. (And heaven knows certain names get recycled repeatedly.) In that vein, Siti and Abdul are very common Malay names, specifically chosen as a reference to this tendency.
Part Fifteen:
Pelesit: From old Malay culture; you can find references in various stories. I first came across it in Che Husna Azhari’s Melor in Perspective, and my choice of Siti’s birthplace is a tribute to that book. Now, I did some research on pelesits, but different sources said different things (feed it rice, feed it blood, feed it constantly, feed it at the full moon). I therefore mashed some of these ideas together and left others out. I claim artistic license!
Pwca: A creature from Celtic folklore. It is a type of faerie, but while it does enjoy playing tricks on and scaring people, it’s generally good-hearted and will help humans in trouble. … According to some legends, anyway. Others say it’s malignant and causes crop failure, etc. It’s a shape-shifter whose preferred form is usually that of a black horse.
Did Ianto run into a pwca, or did he make it up? I don’t know, and my Ianto!muse isn’t talking.
The Lair: Or the archives. Whatever you want to call them. The quote comes from Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy. It’s part of a message that hangs over the Gate to Hell.
The full text, as translated by H.F. Cary:
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Proverbs: In Welsh: Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg. = “Steady tapping breaks the stone.”
In Japanese: Ishi no ue ni mo sannen. (石の上にも三年) = literally, “Three years on a stone.”
Also in Japanese: Korogaru ishi ni koke musazu. (転がる石に苔むさず) = literally, a rolling stone doesn’t gather moss - but in Japanese culture, moss is beautiful and therefore desirable. Therefore, staying still and being patient instead of being constantly on the go is the lesson to be learned here.
They’re all essentially the English “Patience is a virtue/Perseverance eventually pays off.”
Part Sixteen:
Naked Hide-and-Seek: I had the game all plotted out, rules and stuff… but it just didn’t fit. So, in this fic-verse, Jack and Ianto were having an argument about games - Jack’s theory is that any game is made better by losing the clothes. Like strip poker, except it’s strip everything, with him. So he really intended for Gwen to join in the argument except, of course, being Jack, he likes people to misunderstand his comments… which is why he totally expected Ianto to take it out of him later.
Death by Toaster: Referencing Tosh’s final log-out message, of course. Liked the idea of a little inside joke there.
Tosh and Owen: In all honesty, I was torn about how that final episode should go. Kill both of them? Save one and not the other? Kill someone else? Have everyone actually live, for once? Obviously, you know which way I finally went, but there was a lot of agonising before I made the final decision. I didn’t automatically decide to save Tosh just because I like her (or kill Gwen because I don’t) - I wanted to make sure whatever happened, it made sense within the context of the plot.
Small difference, large change. Ianto’s Weevil-telepathy lets him go the nuclear plant instead of Owen. Familiarity with the ops means he can work faster and doesn’t need Tosh’s help the way Owen does - so things get done sooner which means he gets out before that power surge which means he doesn’t die there. That in turn means that he can get back to the Hub to find out what happened to Tosh, and his mental link with Jack means that he can get her help immediately.
And we all know what happens when they spend a lot of time trying to save Tosh and forget about Grey…
Part Seventeen:
42: HHGG - The answer to life, the universe and everything (as stated by Deep Thought). See Jack’s list, point 42.
I love you: Is saying the words a bad thing? Maybe, if it isn’t handled quite right, which is one reason why I rewrote this part so many times.
Ianto’s not scared anymore of saying the words. Given the place words have in his life, I imagine he’ll occasionally tell Jack he loves him, when they’re alone together. It’s something private; little treasures he’ll give Jack. That’s what those three words are, to him.
And Jack? I think Jack’s pretty scared of saying the words themselves - defining his feelings too closely - which is why he fumbles for the words while Ianto’s still alive. He can say it when Ianto’s dead, but when he feels like he’s back on borrowed time, he loses the words again.
Ianto gets that, and Ianto isn’t going to push for something that’s frankly unnecessary. It’s nice to hear the words once or twice, but he doesn’t need them, not anymore.
Song List
You might have noticed that there were a number of songs throughout this fic. Here they are, in order:
Lisa Lân (Welsh folk song; lyrics and music both available on this page)
Frankie Valli - Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (John Barrowman’s cover here)
Billie Holiday - There Is No Greater Love (recording here)
Elton John - Your Song (John Barrowman’s cover here; and a live performance here)
Cole Porter - Easy to Love (John Barrowman’s cover here; Ella Fitzgerald’s here)
Bryan Adams - Heaven (John Barrowman’s cover here)
Waltzing Matilda (Australia’s unofficial national anthem)
Gaelic Storm - Short a Couple A’Bob (You can download a copy here)
(If I missed any, let me know!)
Things About Ianto Jones That Constantly Amaze Me
aka
Everything Wonderful About Ianto Jones
aka
Why Ianto Jones is Awesome
aka
Jack’s List
- I think I could love you.
- Makes me happy.
- So incredibly brave.
- Dependable.
- Takes care of all of us.
- Loving.
- Has tamed a pterodactyl. (Chocolate? Seriously? How’d you come up with that?)
- Scarily intelligent.
- Looks good in casual clothes.
- Looks really good in a suit.
- Amazing poker face.
- Makes a damn good cup of coffee.
- Understands me. I don’t understand me. How do you do it?
- Listens.
- Always knows how to make me feel better.
- Is fucking gorgeous (pun fully intended).
- Appreciates the coat. Yes, dammit, that is important.
- Strong. In every respect.
- Reminds me why life’s worth living.
- Is a fighter.
- Has an amazing ass! V. impt!
- Has a tongue to die for (actually, I’m talking about all the languages you speak).
- Has a tongue to die for (okay, I’m talking about what you think I’m talking about).
- Has magic fingers.
- Further to points 9 and 10 - now conclusively proven: Looks best without any clothes on.
- Holds my secrets.
- Never demands anything of me (which is why I can give everything).
- Holds me.
- Forgives me (even if I don’t deserve to be).
- Gives me strength.
- Good tailor. My coat appreciates this.
- Wicked sense of humour.
- Organised.
- Giving.
- Good at reading people (for someone who claims to be introverted…).
- Apparently, takes great pleasure in breaking all rules of telepathy.
- Can control Weevils. Which is even more improbable than the pterodactyl!
- Is never blasé about my deaths.
- Further to point 26 - unless they’re hurting me.
- Trustworthy. No, really. Yes, I’m serious. No, I don’t have a concussion.
- Open-minded.
- Knows everything!