Fic: Time Enough and Life. (3/6)
Time Enough and Life part three
Link to part two
Six hours after the meeting in the board room, Jack sits in the small reception of the Future Options Committee, waiting to see Margaret Hughes, a minor backbench minister and person in charge of communications for the FOC.
The call to the FOC had gone reasonably well, although the choice between a meeting at three that day or the next available one was nearly a month away hadn't been ideal. There's been no question of making Ianto wait weeks for even the chance of an answer, so after giving Owen enough time to run his tests, they'd driven to London.
Bored, Jack wanders over to the window. Housed on one of the upper floors a modern office block on the edge of the docklands, he knows, that if it were still standing, they would be able to see the towering glass and steel structure of Torchwood Tower. As it is, the skyline has a conspicuously empty space.
Ianto remains seated on the only chair that doesn't give him a view of the window, trying to occupy his mind by reading the obligatory out of date National Geographic magazine that seems to feature in all waiting rooms. Including, Jack thinks with an amused smile, waiting rooms that aren't even on Earth.
It's about the only thing that even slightly funny since they left Cardiff.
The drive had been difficult. As while the traffic had been relatively light, and with even the M25 being something like mobile, Ianto had become quieter and more tense the nearer they'd got to the capital. By the time they'd left the motorway and begun threading their way through North East London he'd been silent, eyes distant, his hands clenched tightly in his lap.
Jack's train of thought is interrupted by Margaret Hughes' PA, who's sitting behind the reception desk, saying, “The minister will see you now.”
Walking in, Ianto just behind him, Jack smiles broadly and holds out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you.”
From behind her desk, Margaret Hughes looks him up and down, her gaze rather disdainful. “Am I detaining you from an urgent fancy dress party?”
“No, I always dress like this.”
“I see.” She opens a folder on her desk. “Personally I find most of the military overbearing, and people who persist in faux military dress and titles after they leave the service pompous and with an over inflated sense of their own self worth.” She looks at him over the top of her glasses. “And you, Captain Harkness, do little to dispel that.”
“When it makes you look this good, why change it?”
“Well what is it you want?” Margaret asks sharply. “I’m very busy, and I have to attend parliament in less than an hour.”
“We’d like the files for a cryogenics project that ran from the seventies to the nineties. It was one of Dr Montgomery’s projects if that helps.”
“Not really.” Pressing the intercom on her desk, she says, “Marcus, find out where the files for research projects are stored. And be quick about it, I’d like them gone as soon as possible.”
“We’re still here,” Jack says, starting to get annoyed at her attitude. She might be having a bad day, but theirs, he can almost guarantee, is worse.
“Yes, you are.”
“You don’t like us, I get it, but…”Jack begins.
“What Jack is trying to say,” Ianto interjects smoothly, moving between Jack and Margaret. “Is that with the Cardiff office providing most, if not all, of the containment capability that Torchwood currently has, that allowing access to the cryogenics units and the associated research would be useful.”
Jack has to hide a smile. Ianto in persuasive bureaucrat mode is something else, seven years of Torchwood One and dealing with Yvonne Hartman have honed it to an art.
“With a general election just round the corner there will, I'm sure, be pressure to present a progress report on how the assets of Torchwood are being used. And in the these budget conscious times we wouldn't want to have the expense of purchasing the components for new units, constructing them, and running the associated study of their effectiveness when there are some already available.”
“Well, no,” the minister starts to say when she is interrupted by Marcus on the intercom.
“The files are at the Alwych office, and the cryo units themselves, if they still exist, can be found at the Richmond depot.”
“Thank You, Marcus.”
“You seem very organised here.”
“We try our best, despite budget issues, that you at least seem to understand.” She gives Ianto something approaching as smile.
“Think of this as the start of a new era of cooperation between the Future Options Committee and the remaining branches of Torchwood.”
“Cooperation goes both ways.”
“Quite. We are on a rather tight schedule, given the staffing levels in Cardiff, I'm sure you understand,” Ianto says smoothly, “So we would greatly appreciate it if we could view the archives and artefact storage facilities today.”
“It's late afternoon, Mr Jones,” she says, tapping her watch. “I suggest that you view the records today and the artefacts tomorrow. The Richmond storage facility isn't open after five.”
“I'm sure they can make an exception for us,” Jack says, smiling at her. “I can be very persuasive.”
“It's covert storage. Although from what I've heard about your operation in Cardiff I doubt that you know what that means.” Folding her arms, she gives the impression that nothing that they can say will change her mind. “Is there a reason why this is suddenly so urgent?”
Without missing a beat, Ianto says, “It's because of the Rift activity cycles. We could only spare the two of us today because it's in a quiet phase.”
“I see. Unfortunately that still doesn't change anything.”
“Alright, we get it,” Jack says getting up from his seat. “Ianto, come on we'd better get going. Don't want to arrive after closing time, do we?”
“If you want anything in future,” Margaret says to them as they leave. “I suggest that you send any requests via Mr Jones, as he at least seems to understand that there should be some kind of protocol to these matters.”
She nods at Jack, and then shakes Ianto's hand. “If you ever consider a transfer to London, ask and I will see that your application is properly considered.”
“I've already worked in London,” Ianto says, the fake bureaucratic warmth slipping to something colder, although still as tightly controlled.
“Then why ever did you leave? Cardiff is hardly the best place to further your career.”
“Staying in London wasn't viable. Not after what happened.”
“Happened?” Margaret gives him a look that is as puzzled as it is irritated.
“The fall of Torchwood One. The thing that meant you have a job here,” Ianto says blandly. “It's hard to continue working somewhere when your place of employment is obliterated along with ninety percent of you co-workers.”
“You were there?” she asks, surprised.
“I was a junior archivist.” The calm in his voice and eyes is icy now. “I spent much of the initial attack stuck in the secure archives due to the automatic lockdown procedures. It's the reason why fifteen of the twenty seven survivors where archivists or researchers.”
The fact that Ianto is willing to use some of his most painful memories like this, to manipulate or just to prove a point, Jack finds rather disturbing, mainly because he's not sure it does hurt Ianto anymore. He doesn't want him to be tormented by the things that have happened to him, but the idea that he's so inured to the pain that it no longer even registers as something beyond the norm, he finds, worries him more.
“Yet you remained in Torchwood's employ.” She sounds impressed. “Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a position back in London? With dedication like yours you could go far.”
“Very sure.” Ianto turns slightly so that he's looking at Jack more than at the minister. “There are people in Cardiff who I'd miss, and who would, I believe, miss me.”
Putting his hand on Ianto's back, Jack can feel him shaking. It's very slight, only something he'd find by touch rather than sight. “You’d better believe it.”
Walking with them to the door of her office, Margaret calls out to her PA, “Marcus, provide them passes and direction to the Aldwych offices and the Richmond depot. And tell Ida to expect them shortly.”
Once they've got the passes from Marcus, and have left the suite of offices belonging to the Future Options committee, Jack says, “I don't think she liked me.”
There's the hint of a smile on Ianto's lips. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“She liked you though.”
“She was meant to. Which was why I told her about working Torchwood One. Give her some of the truth, and she won't feel the need to go looking for anything else.” He shrugs and then pushes his hands into his pockets. “She's just like how all senior management at One used to be, concerned with appearing to keep to the rules and with getting their name known.”
“You didn't like her then?”
“Like has nothing to do with it.” Stopping he looks Jack in the eye, and says, “We can't remain cut off from London, or barely on speaking terms with Glasgow, not forever.”
“We manage fine without them.” Today’s meeting with Margaret Hughes had just been a reminder of just why he hates dealing with politicians.
“For now we do,” Ianto says quietly. “But I've been thinking, what if something happened to Cardiff, another Abbadon? Or the Rift just snatched up the whole Hub, if we disappeared like Four did? The Rift would still need monitoring, it would have to be rebuilt, and we need them to realise how important what we do there is, so they don’t cut us off.”
“Alright,” Jack agrees rather reluctantly. It's true, but he supposed he's never really given it too much thought until now. Until 1999 it wasn't a problem, Alex had kept in contact with London and Glasgow, so he didn’t need to do it. After that there had been little left in Cardiff, just himself and the Hub, but he'd managed okay, it had just been a matter of recruiting the right people. And with Tosh, Owen, Gwen and Ianto on his team he knows he’s found the right ones. He doesn’t want anything to come along and change that.
The conversation about the survivors of Torchwood One sticks in Jack’s mind, and as they reach the lift, he says, “What did happen to them?”
“Who?” Ianto asks distractedly, starting to look exhausted now that they've secured what they came to get.
“The twenty seven.” Jack knows that they survived, that was in the final report. What happened to them afterwards is probably available somewhere, but Jack hasn't until now really thought about finding out.
Ianto leans back against the wall of the lift. “Some opted for retcon. Some went to work for UNIT. One, I think, went into MI5 as some kind of analyst or code breaker. And some, I imagine, are still in hospital or rehabilitation centres. A few died.”
Jack wonders if it’s because of injuries or whether they couldn't live with what they'd seen, and retcon had failed to rectify that.
“Four,” Ianto says eyes down cast. “Well four that I know about any way. Derek was the oldest of us that survived. He’d stayed past retirement, he said trying to catalogue the artefacts kept his mind working. He had a heart attack six months ago.”
“He was a friend then?” Jack asks, seeing the loss in Ianto’s eyes.
“Derek was head of the section seven secure archives, so he was my boss.” Ianto smiles wanly. “But he was a good friend too. He had so many stories of London in the sixties, when he arrived here from Jamaica.”
It’s the most Jack has heard Ianto talk about his previous colleagues and he says, “It was a pretty good time to be in London.”
Ianto smiles again, a little happier this time. “I think it was the culture shock aspect of it that spoke to me most, he’d left working on fishing boats in Kingston to work in the port of London. I’d gone to sleep in 1973 and woke in 1999. I made me realise that I could adjust too, and how lucky I was. I had a home, a job for life, and somebody who loved me. He’d had it so much harder when he’d arrived and still made a go of it.”
Putting an arm around Ianto’s shoulders, Jack says, “I’m glad you had somebody to talk to, finding a friend like that when you’re out of your time, it makes a hell of a difference.”
He nods, looking thoughtful. “It really did.”
They fall in to silence as they leave the lift, a combination of losing the privacy the lift had provided and thoughts of just what they might find at the archives.
“Why now?” Ianto asks as they reach the car.
Jack presses a button on the key fob to unlock the car. “Why now, what?”
“Asking about the survivors?” Ianto gets in to the front passenger seat. His voice is weary, but not accusatory as he continues. “You didn't care when you found out there were only twenty seven survivors. So why now?”
It seems a little heartless on the face of things, and he finds that he doesn't want Ianto to think of him like that, even if sometimes it's the truth. “Honestly,” Jack says getting into the car beside Ianto. “I was angry.”
“That they survived?” Ianto looks confused.
“No.” Jack starts the engine, and pushes the car into gear with more force than is necessary. “I was angry at Torchwood One, at the management there for opening the void. For getting Rose killed.”
“I'm sorry,” Ianto says, looking down at his hands rather than at Jack. “I didn't know you'd lost somebody there.”
“I didn't. Well I did, but she'd not dead,” Jack clarifies as they moves out into the slow moving traffic of central London. “Rose is in a parallel Earth, cut off from this one forever, or so I'm told.”
“The Doctor,” Ianto says his tone carefully neutral.
“Yes. It was probably the best piece of news I got while I was away.” And that pretty much summed up the Year That Never Was, when one of the best thing that happened, apart from it ending, was getting told you'd never be able to see one of your friends again.
Ianto is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Did she really go to a parallel world, or was she taken by the void?”
“If the Doctor says Rose is there, she's there.” Jack knows his relationship with the Doctor is far from simple and there is some lingering hurt there, but he know that he'd never lie about that. Rose had been too special to them both for that to ever happen. “The Doctor's not the kind of guy to spare your feelings.”
“If Rose went there, could some of the missing have gone there too?” Ianto asks hopefully. “I mean they could still be alive, couldn't they?”
Jack grips the wheel a little tighter, hating what he has to do next. “I'm sorry. Rose was the only one. Her father, parallel world father, came to get her at the last moment, or she would have been taken too.”
Ianto nods. The hope that had been in his face gone, replaced by a loss that Jack knows he's not going to be able to relieve.
Ianto is quiet on the drive to Aldwych, his willingness to talk replaced by sadness for everything that he’s lost.
* * *
The Aldwych office proves to be a substantial portion of St Catherine's House, a sprawling Victorian building which once housed the national records office. Just a small brass plate by the door engraved with 'FOC, by Royal appointment' lets them knows that they've found the right building.
Pressing the intercom by the door, Jack waits for a response. After a couple of minutes, and there’s no reply, he presses it again.
“Alright, I’m coming,” says a woman’s voice with a rather strong Glaswegian accent. A few moments later the door is opened by a young women wearing a lab coat adorned with a few dozen buttons which mostly proclaim punk isn't dead, her corn-rowed hair dyed bright primary colours.
“Ida Adoyo.” She holds out her hand.
“Captain Jack Harkness.”
“Ianto Jones.”
“I was told to expect a military type and a suit.” She indicates for them to follow her inside. “You really aren’t anything like what I had in mind.”
Ida is nothing like Jack had expected either. Somehow when you get told there's an archivist called Ida, you get images of tweed skirts, blue rinse hair, and library 'no talking' signs. “Not disappointed?” he asks.
“Hardly,” she says with a laugh. “I was beginning to think I was the only one under fifty who worked for the FOC.”
“We’re not FOC. We’re Torchwood.”
“Same difference, isn't it?” She closes the door behind them. “I worked with old Archie for a year or so back in Glasgow. Drove each other crazy.”
“Archie has that affect on people,” Jack says with a smile. He glances at Ianto, who's not really made any effort to join the conversation. He appears calm, perhaps relieved that he's not having to salvage the situation as he'd had to do with Margaret Hughes.
Turning back to Ida, Jack asks, “So what do you do here?”
“Pretty much everything,” Ida says, leading them through the maze of corridors. “I’m the only one who works here. Mostly it's getting the files into some kind of usable order, and trying to conserve the stuff that's fire or water damaged.”
She stops by a door. “I fished out the files you wanted, they’re mostly okay, just a bit mixed up. I think they are all here, but I’ve not had time to check.”
Relieved that it’s very unlikely that Ida would have seen Ianto’s name on any of the paperwork by accident, Jack says, “Thanks.”
“You two okay if I leave you to it?” Ida asks, opening the door, but not going inside. “Only I've got a load of fire damaged stuff I was prepping.
“And you want to get it finished?” Ianto says finally joining the conversation. “I know that feeling. An archivist's work is never done.”
She laughs then says, “Cool. If you need me, I'm three doors down on the left. And tell me when you're going to go. Don't want to leave you locked in for the night by mistake. Did that to Archie once, back in Glasgow. Don't think the old goat has ever forgiven me.”
Once Ida has gone they turn their attention to the files.
A dozen boxes have been places across three tables that are, along with a couple of chairs, the only furniture in the room. Stacked in them is a jumble of old brown cardboard folders, box files, scraps of carbon paper, loose pieces of ordinary paper, and a few antiquated five and a quarter inch floppy discs from the early eighties.
“We're going to be here for days,” Ianto says looking at them with a rather defeated expression. He picks up one of the discs. “Do we even have anything with us to read this?”
“It might not take as long as you think,” Jack says producing a small, metal device from his coat pocket.
“That's the data scanner.” Ianto looks surprised. “It wasn't so long ago you said no taking alien tech outside the Hub.”
“I said no taking it home.” Jack smiles. “If it makes you feel any better I've left a note saying that we've taken it out of the Hub.”
“We have an artefact signing out book now?” Ianto sounds rather sceptical at the concept, or possibly at the idea that anybody will remember to use it.
“Not exactly,” Jack admits. “More of a post-it on my desk, but it's the thought that counts, right?”
Ianto give him a rather despairing look, and then says, “Do we know what the capacity on it is?”
“No.” Jack hands the device to Ianto. “Tosh gave it a thorough testing though - we had the whole of Cardiff University’s technical library on there at one point.”
Even with the scanner it takes some time to work through all the paperwork. As although it had worked incredibly fast on printed material on neat, numbered pages, dealing with the often hand written notes, carbon paper copies and jumbled sheets of paper had slowed it down.
There is the temptation to start reading what they've got right now, but if they do that Jack knows that they'll not have enough time to get it all copied before it's time for the archives to close.
Eventually though, Ianto tucks the alien book reader back into his pocket, saying, “That's the last of it.”
“There's no point in driving back to Cardiff tonight,” Jack says looking at the clock. “I'd only have to drive back tomorrow to look at the storage facility.”
“You want to stay overnight?” Ianto asks, as he starts to pack the files back into their boxes.
“I was thinking we could stay.” Jack gets a little closer to him. “I know this hotel, great beds.”
Ianto looks at him, surprised. “We'd be staying as a couple?”
“Well I wasn't planning on single beds,” Jack says unable to keep the hurt from his voice. Ianto has never given him any indication that he's not happy with people knowing about their relationship. “That's not a problem, is it?”
“No.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I didn't mean it like that. I just don't want you doing it because you feel sorry for me.”
“I'm doing this,” Jack says, putting his arms around Ianto. “Because I've spent the last couple of hours watching you shed bits of clothing.” He nods towards Ianto's suit jacket hung neatly over the back of a chair, and then towards the tie that coiled on the table top. “And I'd like to help you get out of the rest of it.”
Ianto smiles, although there's a hollowness behind it that Jack hates to see, and then says, “It's good to know some things don't change.”
“Yeah.” Jack wonders if Ianto knows that it's stopped just being about the sex to him. The sex is good bordering on the fantastic, and honestly the idea of Ianto remaining young, fit and attractive is appealing, but that's only a small part of it.
Ianto has become a strong, silent present in his life. He understands the hard choices, knows what they cost, they are so much stronger together than they are apart. Once, Jack knows, he would have considered himself a gullible fool for thinking like this, now he's certain he's the luckiest man in the world.
“What are we going to do about the files?” Ianto says gesturing at the boxes.
There is, Jack knows, that now they’ve asked for these files, the possibility that somebody high up in the FOC might become curious as to their contents. “We can take them back to the Hub.”
Ianto considers the boxes for a moment and then says, “They aren’t all going to fit in the car.”
Jack wishes that they’d been able to take the SUV rather than Ianto’s car; space wouldn’t have been an issue then. But leaving Owen, Tosh and Gwen without it really hadn’t been an option. A lot of the things they’ve transported in the back of the SUV you really wouldn’t want in your car.
“We could call Harwoods,” Ianto says thoughtfully. “As long as the boxes are all sealed up, I don’t think anyone is likely to be too curious.”
“Rhys’ haulage company?” Since the incident with the space whale, Gwen’s refusal to retcon him, and the Nostrovites at the wedding Jack is as sure as he can be about Rhys’ ability not to tell everybody about what Torchwood does.
“Or we could hire a van,” he says rather more doubtfully.
Given how distracted Ianto had been on the way to London, Jack really doesn’t like the idea of them being into separate vehicles for the drive back. “Rhys it is then.”
It only takes a few minutes to get through to Gwen to ask her for Rhys' number, and to tell her that they are staying in London overnight.
Contacting Rhys takes slightly longer, but eventually they arrange for the files to be collected the next day, Rhys agreeing to do the pickup himself, as he'd got to drive up to Croydon with a load of machine parts any way.
Finding the room where Ida is working isn’t difficult, the sound of Sham 69’s If the Kids are United audible even with the door closed.
“You find what you wanted then?” Ida asks, turning down the volume on her CD player, as they let themselves in to the small lab.
“Maybe,” Ianto says, looking at the piles of sealed clear plastic bags containing files charred around the edges which are stacked on a work bench than runs along one wall. “There's too much to read through today. We’re going to need to send the files to Cardiff so that we can look at the data properly. We'll return them once we’ve finished.”
“You’re taking them with you now?” Ida asks surprised.
“No,” he says sounding a little distant as he walks over to the papers.
“We're sending a guy to pick them up tomorrow afternoon. Rhys Williams,” Jack says, taking control of the conversation, as he sees Ianto's growing discomfort at the smoke blackened files, their presence a reminder of the fires that had broken out in the archives of Torchwood One during the battle.
Putting a hand on his lovers arm, Jack says, “We'd better go. The hotel room isn't going to book itself.”
Ianto blinks, and turns away from the files, before saying a little distractedly, “Of course. Yes.”
“You alright?” Ida asks, looking curiously at him. “Only you look a bit out if it.”
“Tired.” Ianto nods. “I'm just tired. It was long drive from Cardiff.”
“Right.” She doesn't sound convinced, but doesn't question it saying, “I don't suppose you can give me any better idea of when this Rhys bloke is turning up?”
“Not really. I could get him to give you call when he's nearly here,” Jack suggests as they walk back through the building, still keeping Ianto close to him.
“You need anything, give me a call,” Ida says as they reach the door.
Following Ianto back to their car, Jack thinks that maybe closer relations with London wouldn't be so bad after all, providing it’s with people like Ida rather than Margaret Hughes.
Part four
Link to part two
Six hours after the meeting in the board room, Jack sits in the small reception of the Future Options Committee, waiting to see Margaret Hughes, a minor backbench minister and person in charge of communications for the FOC.
The call to the FOC had gone reasonably well, although the choice between a meeting at three that day or the next available one was nearly a month away hadn't been ideal. There's been no question of making Ianto wait weeks for even the chance of an answer, so after giving Owen enough time to run his tests, they'd driven to London.
Bored, Jack wanders over to the window. Housed on one of the upper floors a modern office block on the edge of the docklands, he knows, that if it were still standing, they would be able to see the towering glass and steel structure of Torchwood Tower. As it is, the skyline has a conspicuously empty space.
Ianto remains seated on the only chair that doesn't give him a view of the window, trying to occupy his mind by reading the obligatory out of date National Geographic magazine that seems to feature in all waiting rooms. Including, Jack thinks with an amused smile, waiting rooms that aren't even on Earth.
It's about the only thing that even slightly funny since they left Cardiff.
The drive had been difficult. As while the traffic had been relatively light, and with even the M25 being something like mobile, Ianto had become quieter and more tense the nearer they'd got to the capital. By the time they'd left the motorway and begun threading their way through North East London he'd been silent, eyes distant, his hands clenched tightly in his lap.
Jack's train of thought is interrupted by Margaret Hughes' PA, who's sitting behind the reception desk, saying, “The minister will see you now.”
Walking in, Ianto just behind him, Jack smiles broadly and holds out his hand. “Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you.”
From behind her desk, Margaret Hughes looks him up and down, her gaze rather disdainful. “Am I detaining you from an urgent fancy dress party?”
“No, I always dress like this.”
“I see.” She opens a folder on her desk. “Personally I find most of the military overbearing, and people who persist in faux military dress and titles after they leave the service pompous and with an over inflated sense of their own self worth.” She looks at him over the top of her glasses. “And you, Captain Harkness, do little to dispel that.”
“When it makes you look this good, why change it?”
“Well what is it you want?” Margaret asks sharply. “I’m very busy, and I have to attend parliament in less than an hour.”
“We’d like the files for a cryogenics project that ran from the seventies to the nineties. It was one of Dr Montgomery’s projects if that helps.”
“Not really.” Pressing the intercom on her desk, she says, “Marcus, find out where the files for research projects are stored. And be quick about it, I’d like them gone as soon as possible.”
“We’re still here,” Jack says, starting to get annoyed at her attitude. She might be having a bad day, but theirs, he can almost guarantee, is worse.
“Yes, you are.”
“You don’t like us, I get it, but…”Jack begins.
“What Jack is trying to say,” Ianto interjects smoothly, moving between Jack and Margaret. “Is that with the Cardiff office providing most, if not all, of the containment capability that Torchwood currently has, that allowing access to the cryogenics units and the associated research would be useful.”
Jack has to hide a smile. Ianto in persuasive bureaucrat mode is something else, seven years of Torchwood One and dealing with Yvonne Hartman have honed it to an art.
“With a general election just round the corner there will, I'm sure, be pressure to present a progress report on how the assets of Torchwood are being used. And in the these budget conscious times we wouldn't want to have the expense of purchasing the components for new units, constructing them, and running the associated study of their effectiveness when there are some already available.”
“Well, no,” the minister starts to say when she is interrupted by Marcus on the intercom.
“The files are at the Alwych office, and the cryo units themselves, if they still exist, can be found at the Richmond depot.”
“Thank You, Marcus.”
“You seem very organised here.”
“We try our best, despite budget issues, that you at least seem to understand.” She gives Ianto something approaching as smile.
“Think of this as the start of a new era of cooperation between the Future Options Committee and the remaining branches of Torchwood.”
“Cooperation goes both ways.”
“Quite. We are on a rather tight schedule, given the staffing levels in Cardiff, I'm sure you understand,” Ianto says smoothly, “So we would greatly appreciate it if we could view the archives and artefact storage facilities today.”
“It's late afternoon, Mr Jones,” she says, tapping her watch. “I suggest that you view the records today and the artefacts tomorrow. The Richmond storage facility isn't open after five.”
“I'm sure they can make an exception for us,” Jack says, smiling at her. “I can be very persuasive.”
“It's covert storage. Although from what I've heard about your operation in Cardiff I doubt that you know what that means.” Folding her arms, she gives the impression that nothing that they can say will change her mind. “Is there a reason why this is suddenly so urgent?”
Without missing a beat, Ianto says, “It's because of the Rift activity cycles. We could only spare the two of us today because it's in a quiet phase.”
“I see. Unfortunately that still doesn't change anything.”
“Alright, we get it,” Jack says getting up from his seat. “Ianto, come on we'd better get going. Don't want to arrive after closing time, do we?”
“If you want anything in future,” Margaret says to them as they leave. “I suggest that you send any requests via Mr Jones, as he at least seems to understand that there should be some kind of protocol to these matters.”
She nods at Jack, and then shakes Ianto's hand. “If you ever consider a transfer to London, ask and I will see that your application is properly considered.”
“I've already worked in London,” Ianto says, the fake bureaucratic warmth slipping to something colder, although still as tightly controlled.
“Then why ever did you leave? Cardiff is hardly the best place to further your career.”
“Staying in London wasn't viable. Not after what happened.”
“Happened?” Margaret gives him a look that is as puzzled as it is irritated.
“The fall of Torchwood One. The thing that meant you have a job here,” Ianto says blandly. “It's hard to continue working somewhere when your place of employment is obliterated along with ninety percent of you co-workers.”
“You were there?” she asks, surprised.
“I was a junior archivist.” The calm in his voice and eyes is icy now. “I spent much of the initial attack stuck in the secure archives due to the automatic lockdown procedures. It's the reason why fifteen of the twenty seven survivors where archivists or researchers.”
The fact that Ianto is willing to use some of his most painful memories like this, to manipulate or just to prove a point, Jack finds rather disturbing, mainly because he's not sure it does hurt Ianto anymore. He doesn't want him to be tormented by the things that have happened to him, but the idea that he's so inured to the pain that it no longer even registers as something beyond the norm, he finds, worries him more.
“Yet you remained in Torchwood's employ.” She sounds impressed. “Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a position back in London? With dedication like yours you could go far.”
“Very sure.” Ianto turns slightly so that he's looking at Jack more than at the minister. “There are people in Cardiff who I'd miss, and who would, I believe, miss me.”
Putting his hand on Ianto's back, Jack can feel him shaking. It's very slight, only something he'd find by touch rather than sight. “You’d better believe it.”
Walking with them to the door of her office, Margaret calls out to her PA, “Marcus, provide them passes and direction to the Aldwych offices and the Richmond depot. And tell Ida to expect them shortly.”
Once they've got the passes from Marcus, and have left the suite of offices belonging to the Future Options committee, Jack says, “I don't think she liked me.”
There's the hint of a smile on Ianto's lips. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“She liked you though.”
“She was meant to. Which was why I told her about working Torchwood One. Give her some of the truth, and she won't feel the need to go looking for anything else.” He shrugs and then pushes his hands into his pockets. “She's just like how all senior management at One used to be, concerned with appearing to keep to the rules and with getting their name known.”
“You didn't like her then?”
“Like has nothing to do with it.” Stopping he looks Jack in the eye, and says, “We can't remain cut off from London, or barely on speaking terms with Glasgow, not forever.”
“We manage fine without them.” Today’s meeting with Margaret Hughes had just been a reminder of just why he hates dealing with politicians.
“For now we do,” Ianto says quietly. “But I've been thinking, what if something happened to Cardiff, another Abbadon? Or the Rift just snatched up the whole Hub, if we disappeared like Four did? The Rift would still need monitoring, it would have to be rebuilt, and we need them to realise how important what we do there is, so they don’t cut us off.”
“Alright,” Jack agrees rather reluctantly. It's true, but he supposed he's never really given it too much thought until now. Until 1999 it wasn't a problem, Alex had kept in contact with London and Glasgow, so he didn’t need to do it. After that there had been little left in Cardiff, just himself and the Hub, but he'd managed okay, it had just been a matter of recruiting the right people. And with Tosh, Owen, Gwen and Ianto on his team he knows he’s found the right ones. He doesn’t want anything to come along and change that.
The conversation about the survivors of Torchwood One sticks in Jack’s mind, and as they reach the lift, he says, “What did happen to them?”
“Who?” Ianto asks distractedly, starting to look exhausted now that they've secured what they came to get.
“The twenty seven.” Jack knows that they survived, that was in the final report. What happened to them afterwards is probably available somewhere, but Jack hasn't until now really thought about finding out.
Ianto leans back against the wall of the lift. “Some opted for retcon. Some went to work for UNIT. One, I think, went into MI5 as some kind of analyst or code breaker. And some, I imagine, are still in hospital or rehabilitation centres. A few died.”
Jack wonders if it’s because of injuries or whether they couldn't live with what they'd seen, and retcon had failed to rectify that.
“Four,” Ianto says eyes down cast. “Well four that I know about any way. Derek was the oldest of us that survived. He’d stayed past retirement, he said trying to catalogue the artefacts kept his mind working. He had a heart attack six months ago.”
“He was a friend then?” Jack asks, seeing the loss in Ianto’s eyes.
“Derek was head of the section seven secure archives, so he was my boss.” Ianto smiles wanly. “But he was a good friend too. He had so many stories of London in the sixties, when he arrived here from Jamaica.”
It’s the most Jack has heard Ianto talk about his previous colleagues and he says, “It was a pretty good time to be in London.”
Ianto smiles again, a little happier this time. “I think it was the culture shock aspect of it that spoke to me most, he’d left working on fishing boats in Kingston to work in the port of London. I’d gone to sleep in 1973 and woke in 1999. I made me realise that I could adjust too, and how lucky I was. I had a home, a job for life, and somebody who loved me. He’d had it so much harder when he’d arrived and still made a go of it.”
Putting an arm around Ianto’s shoulders, Jack says, “I’m glad you had somebody to talk to, finding a friend like that when you’re out of your time, it makes a hell of a difference.”
He nods, looking thoughtful. “It really did.”
They fall in to silence as they leave the lift, a combination of losing the privacy the lift had provided and thoughts of just what they might find at the archives.
“Why now?” Ianto asks as they reach the car.
Jack presses a button on the key fob to unlock the car. “Why now, what?”
“Asking about the survivors?” Ianto gets in to the front passenger seat. His voice is weary, but not accusatory as he continues. “You didn't care when you found out there were only twenty seven survivors. So why now?”
It seems a little heartless on the face of things, and he finds that he doesn't want Ianto to think of him like that, even if sometimes it's the truth. “Honestly,” Jack says getting into the car beside Ianto. “I was angry.”
“That they survived?” Ianto looks confused.
“No.” Jack starts the engine, and pushes the car into gear with more force than is necessary. “I was angry at Torchwood One, at the management there for opening the void. For getting Rose killed.”
“I'm sorry,” Ianto says, looking down at his hands rather than at Jack. “I didn't know you'd lost somebody there.”
“I didn't. Well I did, but she'd not dead,” Jack clarifies as they moves out into the slow moving traffic of central London. “Rose is in a parallel Earth, cut off from this one forever, or so I'm told.”
“The Doctor,” Ianto says his tone carefully neutral.
“Yes. It was probably the best piece of news I got while I was away.” And that pretty much summed up the Year That Never Was, when one of the best thing that happened, apart from it ending, was getting told you'd never be able to see one of your friends again.
Ianto is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Did she really go to a parallel world, or was she taken by the void?”
“If the Doctor says Rose is there, she's there.” Jack knows his relationship with the Doctor is far from simple and there is some lingering hurt there, but he know that he'd never lie about that. Rose had been too special to them both for that to ever happen. “The Doctor's not the kind of guy to spare your feelings.”
“If Rose went there, could some of the missing have gone there too?” Ianto asks hopefully. “I mean they could still be alive, couldn't they?”
Jack grips the wheel a little tighter, hating what he has to do next. “I'm sorry. Rose was the only one. Her father, parallel world father, came to get her at the last moment, or she would have been taken too.”
Ianto nods. The hope that had been in his face gone, replaced by a loss that Jack knows he's not going to be able to relieve.
Ianto is quiet on the drive to Aldwych, his willingness to talk replaced by sadness for everything that he’s lost.
* * *
The Aldwych office proves to be a substantial portion of St Catherine's House, a sprawling Victorian building which once housed the national records office. Just a small brass plate by the door engraved with 'FOC, by Royal appointment' lets them knows that they've found the right building.
Pressing the intercom by the door, Jack waits for a response. After a couple of minutes, and there’s no reply, he presses it again.
“Alright, I’m coming,” says a woman’s voice with a rather strong Glaswegian accent. A few moments later the door is opened by a young women wearing a lab coat adorned with a few dozen buttons which mostly proclaim punk isn't dead, her corn-rowed hair dyed bright primary colours.
“Ida Adoyo.” She holds out her hand.
“Captain Jack Harkness.”
“Ianto Jones.”
“I was told to expect a military type and a suit.” She indicates for them to follow her inside. “You really aren’t anything like what I had in mind.”
Ida is nothing like Jack had expected either. Somehow when you get told there's an archivist called Ida, you get images of tweed skirts, blue rinse hair, and library 'no talking' signs. “Not disappointed?” he asks.
“Hardly,” she says with a laugh. “I was beginning to think I was the only one under fifty who worked for the FOC.”
“We’re not FOC. We’re Torchwood.”
“Same difference, isn't it?” She closes the door behind them. “I worked with old Archie for a year or so back in Glasgow. Drove each other crazy.”
“Archie has that affect on people,” Jack says with a smile. He glances at Ianto, who's not really made any effort to join the conversation. He appears calm, perhaps relieved that he's not having to salvage the situation as he'd had to do with Margaret Hughes.
Turning back to Ida, Jack asks, “So what do you do here?”
“Pretty much everything,” Ida says, leading them through the maze of corridors. “I’m the only one who works here. Mostly it's getting the files into some kind of usable order, and trying to conserve the stuff that's fire or water damaged.”
She stops by a door. “I fished out the files you wanted, they’re mostly okay, just a bit mixed up. I think they are all here, but I’ve not had time to check.”
Relieved that it’s very unlikely that Ida would have seen Ianto’s name on any of the paperwork by accident, Jack says, “Thanks.”
“You two okay if I leave you to it?” Ida asks, opening the door, but not going inside. “Only I've got a load of fire damaged stuff I was prepping.
“And you want to get it finished?” Ianto says finally joining the conversation. “I know that feeling. An archivist's work is never done.”
She laughs then says, “Cool. If you need me, I'm three doors down on the left. And tell me when you're going to go. Don't want to leave you locked in for the night by mistake. Did that to Archie once, back in Glasgow. Don't think the old goat has ever forgiven me.”
Once Ida has gone they turn their attention to the files.
A dozen boxes have been places across three tables that are, along with a couple of chairs, the only furniture in the room. Stacked in them is a jumble of old brown cardboard folders, box files, scraps of carbon paper, loose pieces of ordinary paper, and a few antiquated five and a quarter inch floppy discs from the early eighties.
“We're going to be here for days,” Ianto says looking at them with a rather defeated expression. He picks up one of the discs. “Do we even have anything with us to read this?”
“It might not take as long as you think,” Jack says producing a small, metal device from his coat pocket.
“That's the data scanner.” Ianto looks surprised. “It wasn't so long ago you said no taking alien tech outside the Hub.”
“I said no taking it home.” Jack smiles. “If it makes you feel any better I've left a note saying that we've taken it out of the Hub.”
“We have an artefact signing out book now?” Ianto sounds rather sceptical at the concept, or possibly at the idea that anybody will remember to use it.
“Not exactly,” Jack admits. “More of a post-it on my desk, but it's the thought that counts, right?”
Ianto give him a rather despairing look, and then says, “Do we know what the capacity on it is?”
“No.” Jack hands the device to Ianto. “Tosh gave it a thorough testing though - we had the whole of Cardiff University’s technical library on there at one point.”
Even with the scanner it takes some time to work through all the paperwork. As although it had worked incredibly fast on printed material on neat, numbered pages, dealing with the often hand written notes, carbon paper copies and jumbled sheets of paper had slowed it down.
There is the temptation to start reading what they've got right now, but if they do that Jack knows that they'll not have enough time to get it all copied before it's time for the archives to close.
Eventually though, Ianto tucks the alien book reader back into his pocket, saying, “That's the last of it.”
“There's no point in driving back to Cardiff tonight,” Jack says looking at the clock. “I'd only have to drive back tomorrow to look at the storage facility.”
“You want to stay overnight?” Ianto asks, as he starts to pack the files back into their boxes.
“I was thinking we could stay.” Jack gets a little closer to him. “I know this hotel, great beds.”
Ianto looks at him, surprised. “We'd be staying as a couple?”
“Well I wasn't planning on single beds,” Jack says unable to keep the hurt from his voice. Ianto has never given him any indication that he's not happy with people knowing about their relationship. “That's not a problem, is it?”
“No.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I didn't mean it like that. I just don't want you doing it because you feel sorry for me.”
“I'm doing this,” Jack says, putting his arms around Ianto. “Because I've spent the last couple of hours watching you shed bits of clothing.” He nods towards Ianto's suit jacket hung neatly over the back of a chair, and then towards the tie that coiled on the table top. “And I'd like to help you get out of the rest of it.”
Ianto smiles, although there's a hollowness behind it that Jack hates to see, and then says, “It's good to know some things don't change.”
“Yeah.” Jack wonders if Ianto knows that it's stopped just being about the sex to him. The sex is good bordering on the fantastic, and honestly the idea of Ianto remaining young, fit and attractive is appealing, but that's only a small part of it.
Ianto has become a strong, silent present in his life. He understands the hard choices, knows what they cost, they are so much stronger together than they are apart. Once, Jack knows, he would have considered himself a gullible fool for thinking like this, now he's certain he's the luckiest man in the world.
“What are we going to do about the files?” Ianto says gesturing at the boxes.
There is, Jack knows, that now they’ve asked for these files, the possibility that somebody high up in the FOC might become curious as to their contents. “We can take them back to the Hub.”
Ianto considers the boxes for a moment and then says, “They aren’t all going to fit in the car.”
Jack wishes that they’d been able to take the SUV rather than Ianto’s car; space wouldn’t have been an issue then. But leaving Owen, Tosh and Gwen without it really hadn’t been an option. A lot of the things they’ve transported in the back of the SUV you really wouldn’t want in your car.
“We could call Harwoods,” Ianto says thoughtfully. “As long as the boxes are all sealed up, I don’t think anyone is likely to be too curious.”
“Rhys’ haulage company?” Since the incident with the space whale, Gwen’s refusal to retcon him, and the Nostrovites at the wedding Jack is as sure as he can be about Rhys’ ability not to tell everybody about what Torchwood does.
“Or we could hire a van,” he says rather more doubtfully.
Given how distracted Ianto had been on the way to London, Jack really doesn’t like the idea of them being into separate vehicles for the drive back. “Rhys it is then.”
It only takes a few minutes to get through to Gwen to ask her for Rhys' number, and to tell her that they are staying in London overnight.
Contacting Rhys takes slightly longer, but eventually they arrange for the files to be collected the next day, Rhys agreeing to do the pickup himself, as he'd got to drive up to Croydon with a load of machine parts any way.
Finding the room where Ida is working isn’t difficult, the sound of Sham 69’s If the Kids are United audible even with the door closed.
“You find what you wanted then?” Ida asks, turning down the volume on her CD player, as they let themselves in to the small lab.
“Maybe,” Ianto says, looking at the piles of sealed clear plastic bags containing files charred around the edges which are stacked on a work bench than runs along one wall. “There's too much to read through today. We’re going to need to send the files to Cardiff so that we can look at the data properly. We'll return them once we’ve finished.”
“You’re taking them with you now?” Ida asks surprised.
“No,” he says sounding a little distant as he walks over to the papers.
“We're sending a guy to pick them up tomorrow afternoon. Rhys Williams,” Jack says, taking control of the conversation, as he sees Ianto's growing discomfort at the smoke blackened files, their presence a reminder of the fires that had broken out in the archives of Torchwood One during the battle.
Putting a hand on his lovers arm, Jack says, “We'd better go. The hotel room isn't going to book itself.”
Ianto blinks, and turns away from the files, before saying a little distractedly, “Of course. Yes.”
“You alright?” Ida asks, looking curiously at him. “Only you look a bit out if it.”
“Tired.” Ianto nods. “I'm just tired. It was long drive from Cardiff.”
“Right.” She doesn't sound convinced, but doesn't question it saying, “I don't suppose you can give me any better idea of when this Rhys bloke is turning up?”
“Not really. I could get him to give you call when he's nearly here,” Jack suggests as they walk back through the building, still keeping Ianto close to him.
“You need anything, give me a call,” Ida says as they reach the door.
Following Ianto back to their car, Jack thinks that maybe closer relations with London wouldn't be so bad after all, providing it’s with people like Ida rather than Margaret Hughes.
Part four