Fanfic - Counting Stars: Calculations [Torchwood: Jack/Ianto]
Title: Calculations
Rating(s): PG-13
Characters/Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto
Warning(s): Spoilers for Counting Stars, and all attendant changes etc made to canon within that ‘verse.
Summary: In which Jack and Ianto have Yet Another Roof-top Conversation.
Author's Notes: Counting Stars-verse - click here for the Master List. For those who don’t want to read it, all you need to know is that Jack and Ianto have a telepathic connection, and Ianto may or may not be immortal (they’ll find out next time he dies, I suppose). Oh, also, Tosh and Owen survived the end of Season 2.
Calculations
If he fell, five seconds would reduce him to a mangled puddle of flesh.
And it wasn’t a given that he’d come back from such an event, so he’d stay far away from the edge. Ianto set his thermos flask down by the stairwell and took a tentative step forward.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand your fondness for heights,” he called out. Climbing atop a roof had certainly done nothing to clear his mind, the one time he'd tried it out alone - although, to be fair, the Millennium Centre roof wasn't in the same league as a roof that was over a hundred feet off the ground.
Jack laughed from his precarious perch on the protruding struts. “Call it a thing I’ve got,” he said casually. “Mind you, I’ve gone a bit off them. After what John did, you know?”
“It takes being pushed off a two-hundred-foot building to come to the conclusion that this might not be the safest hobby?” Ianto asked.
“Come here,” Jack said by way of response.
“Uh,” Ianto said. “No.”
“Not all the way out here,” Jack allowed. “Just close enough to see the ground properly.”
Ianto cautiously inched forward, stopping about six feet from Jack. “All right?” he asked.
“Good enough,” Jack said, turning back to look over the city. “Two things I see when I’m up here. Want to guess?”
Ianto pondered that for a while. Knowing Jack, it was likely to be something so obvious people would miss the fact that he saw a deeper meaning in it. “The city,” he said at last. “And the stars.”
“Give the man a prize!” Jack said. “Exactly. From the ground, you get lost in the city. You can’t see what it really is. Too high up - in planes and things - and you’re too far away. Skyscraper roofs give the best balance.”
“Funny you mention balance,” Ianto muttered, envisioning Jack tripping and falling. He shook his head to clear the thought away, then added, “Care to explain?”
“Simple enough,” Jack said, shrugging lightly. He gestured grandly towards the sky. “Where they’re coming from -” He swept his arm down over the city. “- What we’re protecting.”
“Bit too simple, I’d say,” Ianto said.
Jack tossed a smirk over his shoulder. “Where we’re going,” he added, pointing at the stars, then pointed downwards. “Sometimes just as bad as what we’re supposed to fight.”
“That’s more like it,” Ianto said, applauding. “That’s the sort of jadedness I expect of Torchwood.”
Jack grinned and finally stepped back from the ledge. Ianto moved back as well, gladly putting a little more distance between him and the edge of the roof.
“Ever wonder what the point is?” Ianto asked, as Jack hopped down to safer ground. “Why we even bother?”
“All the time,” Jack said. “Why do you think I climb so many roofs? It’s not because I want the exercise.”
“Here I thought you always took the lift anyway,” Ianto replied.
“Only if they’re still operational,” Jack grumbled. “They don’t always let you use the lifts after hours.”
“As I have just discovered,” Ianto agreed. “Stop deflecting.”
“I’m not,” Jack protested. “I told you I do think about it.”
“And?” Ianto asked expectantly.
“And - it has to be done. I wish I didn’t have to sacrifice all of us for it, but I know there’s no one better to do it,” Jack said.
“There’s a reason you’re our leader,” Ianto said. “But when you come across things like - like Brynblaidd, for instance - do you feel like you’re protecting the wrong people?”
Jack shook his head, but it looked like an affirmation to Ianto. “I can’t focus on the bad,” he said. “I know it’s there, but I’ve got to look at it as a whole. I know where the human race is going, generally speaking, and I just want to make sure we get there.”
“Do you miss it?” Ianto asked, before he could stop himself.
“You’re full of questions today,” Jack said, smiling. “Haven’t I already told you? Going back wouldn’t change anything for me. I don’t belong there anymore. But it doesn’t matter, because right now, I wouldn’t give up what I’ve got for the universe.”
“Been upgraded from the world, I see,” Ianto said. Jack rolled his eyes and sat down, sprawling out comfortably and staring up at the night sky.
“Suppose I’d ever have the chance to see the 51st Century?” Ianto asked.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I really hope not,” Jack said. “If you lived that long, that would mean -”
Ianto hummed in agreement. “What if we got our hands on time-travel tech?” he said. “Mended your vortex manipulator?”
Jack raised his arm and shook his wristband at Ianto. “Not unless we get a new tri-carbide temporal-bypass chip falling through the Rift,” he said. “The Doctor really did a number on this to stop me going anywhere in time.”
“Did he,” Ianto said neutrally.
Jack blinked and sat up, crossing his legs under him. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Why don’t you like the Doctor?”
“Never said that,” Ianto pointed out reasonably, walking towards the stairwell.
Jack twisted to watch him. “Didn’t have to,” he said. He couldn’t see properly in the dim light, but the faint embarrassment radiating from Ianto was enough proof that the younger man was blushing. “So?”
Ianto sighed and returned with the thermos flask he’d carefully set aside earlier. “Don’t suppose you could forget this… realisation,” he suggested, sitting down next to Jack. He opened the flask and poured a measure of coffee out into the cap, then offered it to Jack.
“Nope,” Jack said, taking the drink. “Explanation, please?”
“I’m sure he’s a nice man and all,” Ianto said. “Seeing as how fond of him you are, and how you’re always saying he and Rose taught you to trust others again - and he’s saved the world plenty of times and whatnot, I suppose -”
“So have we,” Jack interrupted. “And you’re blithering, Ianto.”
Ianto gave him a cross look.
“You are,” Jack protested. “Why don’t you like him?”
“Becausehehurtyou,” Ianto said in a rush.
Jack attempted to parse out the slurred syllables. It took a few moments, especially since Ianto’s Welsh accent had been thicker than usual, but he finally worked it out. That didn’t, however, mean he understood. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.
Ianto took back the flask cap and poured out a little more coffee, lifting it to his lips to buy himself some time. Jack watched him patiently.
“All we need is a campfire and the desert wind blowing around us,” Jack observed mildly. “Very wild west of us, all this.”
“This would have to be alcohol then, not coffee,” Ianto said, then sighed heavily. “He just left you there, Jack. Do you remember, you said once that some consideration for your body would have been nice? But he just left you - and I think he did know what had happened.”
Jack frowned, then looked away. “Yeah, he did,” he admitted.
Ianto watched him for a moment, then took a sip of coffee. “And he called you wrong,” he added, not looking at Jack. “I can’t forgive him for that.”
Jack’s head snapped up. “Did I tell you that?” he asked in surprise.
“Don’t you remember?” Ianto asked wryly. “But no, it’s something you said in your sleep. You were having a nightmare.”
“I talk in my sleep?” Jack asked in abject horror.
“Not exactly,” Ianto said. “It’s kind of like - sleep-talking, I guess? I woke you up from the nightmare and you told me a few things but you didn’t remember it the next morning.”
“I sleep-talk,” Jack said, grimacing. “That’s a new one.”
Ianto smiled. “It’s better than sleep-fighting,” he said.
“Oh yes,” Jack said with feeling. Ianto had punched Jack on a few occasions when he’d had nightmares. It was fortunate Jack healed fast… and that Jack didn’t hold the inadvertent violence against him.
“In any case,” Ianto said. “His saying that about you is not something I can forgive. Especially when it’s affected you enough that you’re still having nightmares about it. And then you said he wanted to keep Saxon alive? Yes, only other survivor of his race, I know that, but also a crazed genocidal lunatic! Just forgot about what Saxon did to Earth, did he? And to you?”
“He thought he could keep him under control,” Jack said reasonably. “Like house arrest.”
“Traipsing all over the universe while you try and unlearn everything Saxon forced you to learn,” Ianto said with a snort.
“He did offer to let me travel with him, afterwards,” Jack said. “I just wanted to come back to you, so I said no.”
Ianto shook his head. “Call it too little, too late,” he said. “He didn’t show any regard for you that I could tell, Jack. Even at the end, it seemed more like he was trying to assuage his own guilt, rather than help you.”
Jack huffed a short laugh and returned to looking at the skies. “There’s no point trying to change your mind, is there?”
“I’ve been trying to change my own mind,” Ianto admitted. “But -”
“Why?” Jack interrupted, puzzled.
“Because he’s important to you?” Ianto said slowly.
Jack smiled, projecting a sense of mingled gratitude and amusement to Ianto. “I don’t mind you not liking him,” he said. “I can’t say I’m completely happy with him, but I still care about him. That doesn’t mean you have to.”
“Well,” Ianto said. “Probably a good thing, because I failed miserably at changing my mind.”
Jack laughed again, this time sounding more relaxed. “We’re none of us perfect,” he said. “And we’re humans, we don’t see the flow of time like he does. I don’t think I can judge him for running away, when I don’t know how he perceives me. I can feel hurt about it, but I can’t judge him.”
“Because you know him,” Ianto said. “I don’t though, and the important thing to me is that you are hurt.”
“I know,” Jack said softly. “And thank you for that. But -”
“Nobody’s perfect,” Ianto quoted. “I know.” They were all so flawed, like any other human and probably any other being in the cosmos. But Torchwood was still trying to keep up the fight, and Ianto realised that the Doctor was probably struggling too, in his own way. The thought made him feel a smidgen more charitable towards the alien, but he still couldn’t bring himself to think very highly of him.
All the same. There was a reason why they did bother.
Ianto stood up and started walking forward. Behind him, Jack watched warily as Ianto stopped right at the edge of the roof, the wind whipping around him briskly. The city lay sprawled before him, multitudes of people quietly going about their business. On his right, the skyline melded with the inky seas, stars glittering in the heavens, their light flickering in the waves.
This was what they lived for.
~fin
CC?
Rating(s): PG-13
Characters/Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto
Warning(s): Spoilers for Counting Stars, and all attendant changes etc made to canon within that ‘verse.
Summary: In which Jack and Ianto have Yet Another Roof-top Conversation.
Author's Notes: Counting Stars-verse - click here for the Master List. For those who don’t want to read it, all you need to know is that Jack and Ianto have a telepathic connection, and Ianto may or may not be immortal (they’ll find out next time he dies, I suppose). Oh, also, Tosh and Owen survived the end of Season 2.
Calculations
If he fell, five seconds would reduce him to a mangled puddle of flesh.
And it wasn’t a given that he’d come back from such an event, so he’d stay far away from the edge. Ianto set his thermos flask down by the stairwell and took a tentative step forward.
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand your fondness for heights,” he called out. Climbing atop a roof had certainly done nothing to clear his mind, the one time he'd tried it out alone - although, to be fair, the Millennium Centre roof wasn't in the same league as a roof that was over a hundred feet off the ground.
Jack laughed from his precarious perch on the protruding struts. “Call it a thing I’ve got,” he said casually. “Mind you, I’ve gone a bit off them. After what John did, you know?”
“It takes being pushed off a two-hundred-foot building to come to the conclusion that this might not be the safest hobby?” Ianto asked.
“Come here,” Jack said by way of response.
“Uh,” Ianto said. “No.”
“Not all the way out here,” Jack allowed. “Just close enough to see the ground properly.”
Ianto cautiously inched forward, stopping about six feet from Jack. “All right?” he asked.
“Good enough,” Jack said, turning back to look over the city. “Two things I see when I’m up here. Want to guess?”
Ianto pondered that for a while. Knowing Jack, it was likely to be something so obvious people would miss the fact that he saw a deeper meaning in it. “The city,” he said at last. “And the stars.”
“Give the man a prize!” Jack said. “Exactly. From the ground, you get lost in the city. You can’t see what it really is. Too high up - in planes and things - and you’re too far away. Skyscraper roofs give the best balance.”
“Funny you mention balance,” Ianto muttered, envisioning Jack tripping and falling. He shook his head to clear the thought away, then added, “Care to explain?”
“Simple enough,” Jack said, shrugging lightly. He gestured grandly towards the sky. “Where they’re coming from -” He swept his arm down over the city. “- What we’re protecting.”
“Bit too simple, I’d say,” Ianto said.
Jack tossed a smirk over his shoulder. “Where we’re going,” he added, pointing at the stars, then pointed downwards. “Sometimes just as bad as what we’re supposed to fight.”
“That’s more like it,” Ianto said, applauding. “That’s the sort of jadedness I expect of Torchwood.”
Jack grinned and finally stepped back from the ledge. Ianto moved back as well, gladly putting a little more distance between him and the edge of the roof.
“Ever wonder what the point is?” Ianto asked, as Jack hopped down to safer ground. “Why we even bother?”
“All the time,” Jack said. “Why do you think I climb so many roofs? It’s not because I want the exercise.”
“Here I thought you always took the lift anyway,” Ianto replied.
“Only if they’re still operational,” Jack grumbled. “They don’t always let you use the lifts after hours.”
“As I have just discovered,” Ianto agreed. “Stop deflecting.”
“I’m not,” Jack protested. “I told you I do think about it.”
“And?” Ianto asked expectantly.
“And - it has to be done. I wish I didn’t have to sacrifice all of us for it, but I know there’s no one better to do it,” Jack said.
“There’s a reason you’re our leader,” Ianto said. “But when you come across things like - like Brynblaidd, for instance - do you feel like you’re protecting the wrong people?”
Jack shook his head, but it looked like an affirmation to Ianto. “I can’t focus on the bad,” he said. “I know it’s there, but I’ve got to look at it as a whole. I know where the human race is going, generally speaking, and I just want to make sure we get there.”
“Do you miss it?” Ianto asked, before he could stop himself.
“You’re full of questions today,” Jack said, smiling. “Haven’t I already told you? Going back wouldn’t change anything for me. I don’t belong there anymore. But it doesn’t matter, because right now, I wouldn’t give up what I’ve got for the universe.”
“Been upgraded from the world, I see,” Ianto said. Jack rolled his eyes and sat down, sprawling out comfortably and staring up at the night sky.
“Suppose I’d ever have the chance to see the 51st Century?” Ianto asked.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I really hope not,” Jack said. “If you lived that long, that would mean -”
Ianto hummed in agreement. “What if we got our hands on time-travel tech?” he said. “Mended your vortex manipulator?”
Jack raised his arm and shook his wristband at Ianto. “Not unless we get a new tri-carbide temporal-bypass chip falling through the Rift,” he said. “The Doctor really did a number on this to stop me going anywhere in time.”
“Did he,” Ianto said neutrally.
Jack blinked and sat up, crossing his legs under him. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Why don’t you like the Doctor?”
“Never said that,” Ianto pointed out reasonably, walking towards the stairwell.
Jack twisted to watch him. “Didn’t have to,” he said. He couldn’t see properly in the dim light, but the faint embarrassment radiating from Ianto was enough proof that the younger man was blushing. “So?”
Ianto sighed and returned with the thermos flask he’d carefully set aside earlier. “Don’t suppose you could forget this… realisation,” he suggested, sitting down next to Jack. He opened the flask and poured a measure of coffee out into the cap, then offered it to Jack.
“Nope,” Jack said, taking the drink. “Explanation, please?”
“I’m sure he’s a nice man and all,” Ianto said. “Seeing as how fond of him you are, and how you’re always saying he and Rose taught you to trust others again - and he’s saved the world plenty of times and whatnot, I suppose -”
“So have we,” Jack interrupted. “And you’re blithering, Ianto.”
Ianto gave him a cross look.
“You are,” Jack protested. “Why don’t you like him?”
“Becausehehurtyou,” Ianto said in a rush.
Jack attempted to parse out the slurred syllables. It took a few moments, especially since Ianto’s Welsh accent had been thicker than usual, but he finally worked it out. That didn’t, however, mean he understood. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.
Ianto took back the flask cap and poured out a little more coffee, lifting it to his lips to buy himself some time. Jack watched him patiently.
“All we need is a campfire and the desert wind blowing around us,” Jack observed mildly. “Very wild west of us, all this.”
“This would have to be alcohol then, not coffee,” Ianto said, then sighed heavily. “He just left you there, Jack. Do you remember, you said once that some consideration for your body would have been nice? But he just left you - and I think he did know what had happened.”
Jack frowned, then looked away. “Yeah, he did,” he admitted.
Ianto watched him for a moment, then took a sip of coffee. “And he called you wrong,” he added, not looking at Jack. “I can’t forgive him for that.”
Jack’s head snapped up. “Did I tell you that?” he asked in surprise.
“Don’t you remember?” Ianto asked wryly. “But no, it’s something you said in your sleep. You were having a nightmare.”
“I talk in my sleep?” Jack asked in abject horror.
“Not exactly,” Ianto said. “It’s kind of like - sleep-talking, I guess? I woke you up from the nightmare and you told me a few things but you didn’t remember it the next morning.”
“I sleep-talk,” Jack said, grimacing. “That’s a new one.”
Ianto smiled. “It’s better than sleep-fighting,” he said.
“Oh yes,” Jack said with feeling. Ianto had punched Jack on a few occasions when he’d had nightmares. It was fortunate Jack healed fast… and that Jack didn’t hold the inadvertent violence against him.
“In any case,” Ianto said. “His saying that about you is not something I can forgive. Especially when it’s affected you enough that you’re still having nightmares about it. And then you said he wanted to keep Saxon alive? Yes, only other survivor of his race, I know that, but also a crazed genocidal lunatic! Just forgot about what Saxon did to Earth, did he? And to you?”
“He thought he could keep him under control,” Jack said reasonably. “Like house arrest.”
“Traipsing all over the universe while you try and unlearn everything Saxon forced you to learn,” Ianto said with a snort.
“He did offer to let me travel with him, afterwards,” Jack said. “I just wanted to come back to you, so I said no.”
Ianto shook his head. “Call it too little, too late,” he said. “He didn’t show any regard for you that I could tell, Jack. Even at the end, it seemed more like he was trying to assuage his own guilt, rather than help you.”
Jack huffed a short laugh and returned to looking at the skies. “There’s no point trying to change your mind, is there?”
“I’ve been trying to change my own mind,” Ianto admitted. “But -”
“Why?” Jack interrupted, puzzled.
“Because he’s important to you?” Ianto said slowly.
Jack smiled, projecting a sense of mingled gratitude and amusement to Ianto. “I don’t mind you not liking him,” he said. “I can’t say I’m completely happy with him, but I still care about him. That doesn’t mean you have to.”
“Well,” Ianto said. “Probably a good thing, because I failed miserably at changing my mind.”
Jack laughed again, this time sounding more relaxed. “We’re none of us perfect,” he said. “And we’re humans, we don’t see the flow of time like he does. I don’t think I can judge him for running away, when I don’t know how he perceives me. I can feel hurt about it, but I can’t judge him.”
“Because you know him,” Ianto said. “I don’t though, and the important thing to me is that you are hurt.”
“I know,” Jack said softly. “And thank you for that. But -”
“Nobody’s perfect,” Ianto quoted. “I know.” They were all so flawed, like any other human and probably any other being in the cosmos. But Torchwood was still trying to keep up the fight, and Ianto realised that the Doctor was probably struggling too, in his own way. The thought made him feel a smidgen more charitable towards the alien, but he still couldn’t bring himself to think very highly of him.
All the same. There was a reason why they did bother.
Ianto stood up and started walking forward. Behind him, Jack watched warily as Ianto stopped right at the edge of the roof, the wind whipping around him briskly. The city lay sprawled before him, multitudes of people quietly going about their business. On his right, the skyline melded with the inky seas, stars glittering in the heavens, their light flickering in the waves.
This was what they lived for.
~fin
CC?