Fic: Sweet Things Changed to Bitterness, Bitter Things Turned into Joy
Title: Sweet Things Changed to Bitterness, Bitter Things Turned into Joy
Author: kauneinsuru
Recipient: EVERYONE!
***
Jack watched Ianto sleep. What a mess. He prided himself in knowing his team: where they lived, who they loved, their favorite type of pizza. He liked to know the big things and the little ones, and he wasn’t sure how he could possibly have missed this.
There must have been signs. Coffee before we knew that we were thirsty and take away before we knew that we were hungry… But, picking up on subliminal desires was easy; any low-level telepath was capable of it. For someone who was apparently as strong as Ianto, there had to have been other signs. Debilitating headaches?
Jack had never been able to read Ianto very well, maybe that should have been the first warning. Some people built up walls in their minds after traumatizing experiences. He’d assumed that was what Ianto had done after Canary Warf and never bothered to look deeper.
I guess that I was wrong. Jack wanted to move-to get up and pace the room until his thoughts quieted, but he didn’t dare.
Jon had made the consequences of such selfish action very clear:
“Right now he is using your shielding to help protect his mind, and focusing all of his abilities on this bond he forged between you. You’ll need to stay in close physical contact, at least until he has learned to build his own shields. Once he has done that, everything will become easier.”
“And if I can’t? What if there is an emergency outside of the Hub, and I have to leave?”
“There’s a good chance that he will go mad. It’s a small miracle that he hasn’t already. Only about one in ten people whose physic abilities manifest in this manner actually survive the shock with their mind intact. In this case, the fact that you-who have some physic ability and with whom he already had a relationship-were there is probably the only reason that he is still sane.”
And Jon. Jon made everything even more complicated. Jack knew that he should call Gwen to make sure that everything had been taken care of at the hotel, and to figure out-considering how long it was taking-where exactly they were, but his phone wasn’t in easy reach, and he didn’t want to leave Ianto. Plus, he trusted Jon to be a gentleman in a woman’s company. Really, he trusted Jon to be a gentleman in any company that didn’t include one Captain Jack Harkness.
Jon had probably invited Gwen to have dinner with him.
Jack wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of Gwen and Jon forging a united front, but there was nothing to be done about it now. If they decided to take over Torchwood Three, or Cardiff, or the world, Jack resolved to sit back, watch, and help to clear up the fallout once Ianto was better.
Imagining Gwen and Jon taking over the world put him in a slightly better mood.
***
“So…is he any good?” Gwen leaned her elbows on the table, and waited. It wasn’t very often that she had an opportunity like this. Ianto joked, but he never really shared anything. Though, he might have opened up to Tosh…
She tried not to follow that thought, and, instead, studied the man across from her.
Jonathon Temple really was an attractive specimen. If she hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t have minded taking him home with her-though he probably wouldn’t have accepted the invitation. She doubted that she had the right equipment.
“I don’t have a clue who you are talking about.” He might have sounded convincing, if he wasn’t smiling just the tiniest bit.
Their food came then, and another bottle of wine. Jon thanked the waiter politely, but didn’t look up. Not a flirt then. Not like Jack, at least.
“Don’t be coy with me. Jack, of course. The tension between you two practically crackles.” Gwen took another sip of her wine. It really was very good. She was glad that Jon had insisted on paying, because she was pretty sure that the entire meal was out of her price range. Though, judging by the designer jeans and t-shirt, and the well-tailored suit jacket that he had changed into, Jon could afford it just fine.
She wondered where the money came from. Working for Torchwood wasn’t a particularly lucrative career in her experience.
He had a London accent. Posh. Maybe he came from an old family.
“I’m afraid, my lady, I don’t kiss and tell.” If his smile, as he swirled his wine, was anything to go by, that was a “yes.”
Gwen sat back to enjoy her salad. Gorgeous, rich, charming, it was hard not to like him.
Part of her felt like she was being disloyal to Ianto, but Jon had insisted that he was only staying for three days. And, no matter how good-looking Jon was, Gwen didn’t believe that Jack would ever risk his relationship with Ianto for a quick fling. Besides, sexual tension didn’t seem to be the only thing that crackled between those two.
There was anger there as well. And mistrust.
It was time to change the line of questioning.
“You seem to know a lot about Jack. How?” Jon stopped meticulously cutting his steak, and set down his utensils.
“Torchwood Three is not the only branch with a file on Captain Jack Harkness.” For a moment, Jon’s eyes seemed colder, more detached. Gwen wondered what Jack had done to hurt Jonathon Temple as badly as he obviously had, and she knew that it was time to change the subject again.
They spent the rest of the afternoon sharing a fabulous meal and talking about Cardiff.
***
Jack spent the afternoon reading one of the murder mysteries that Ianto had finished and left lying about.
He had just about figured out who the killer was when Gwen and Jon arrived. Gwen at least, was a little tipsy. Jack wasn’t sure why that made him quite as angry as it did.
Jon climbed down the ladder first and gallantly held out his arm to help Gwen down off the last rung-not that she needed the help. They both looked happy and relaxed. Gwen giggled as Jon kissed the back of her hand before turning towards the bed. It made Jack jealous.
He didn’t have that sort of affect on either of them. At least not anymore.
“Gwen. I think that it would be best if you went upstairs and got some actual work done instead of getting drunk with our guest. The Pict’s body still has to be retrieved from the warehouse. Andy said that he could help with that this evening, and you need to retcon the victims along with whoever came into contact with the corpse. There is a list upstairs on the coffee table.” He had expected Gwen to be abashed, but she just shot him a knowing look and climbed back up the ladder.
Jon seemed completely impervious to his ire.
“Stop acting like I’ve stolen one of your children, Jack. I just took her to lunch.” With Gwen gone, Jon was back to his normal, grumpy self.
Jack thought about throwing the paperback at him but collected himself and set it on the bedside table instead.
“I liked that one.” Jack was surprised that Jon didn’t sound unfriendly. He didn’t sound friendly either, but it was a step up from overt hostility. “It has lots of twists. Have you figured out who the killer is yet?”
“Almost.” If, for whatever reason, Jon was willing to work together peaceably, than Jack would do his best to curtail the irrational jealousy. Jack followed Jon’s gaze and realized that he was playing unconsciously with Ianto’s hair. He met Jon’s eyes and didn’t stop.
“You should wake him up so that we can get started sorting this mess. I can only be in Cardiff for three days, and one is already almost over with.” It was a good point.
“Alright. We’ll meet you upstairs in fifteen minutes.”
“My memories must be faulty. I could have sworn you were capable of lasting longer than that.” For a moment the years fell away, and they were friends again.
Jon almost looked the same. A little older. A little wiser. His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled now.
Jack broke eye contact and the moment ended.
He listened to Jon climb the ladder back up into the Hub before turning to wake Ianto.
***
That first night was frustrating. Jon had taken an immediate dislike to Ianto, and the reverse was equally true.
They both went out of their way to be surly and uncooperative, and Jack felt like he was the fire hydrant stuck in the middle, being pissed on.
It didn’t help that without the bond under control, he was stuck with all of Ianto’s emotions on top of his own.
It wasn’t a very comfortable feeling.
Especially when the vast majority of those emotions were negative.
“Think of thoughts as words. You can project them, like you can project your voice. But to understand you, the person that you are talking to has to be able to speak the same language. For you, telepathy is like a language that you had spoken as a child but then forgotten. You’re brain knew it; you were capable of speaking it, you just weren’t aware of the fact that you could speak it. When you met the Pict, it was like having someone scream at you in that forgotten language. Your brain recognized that you should be able to speak it, and it readjusted itself so that you could.”
Ianto didn’t like being lectured. Jack could feel his reluctance to cooperate increase the longer that Jon went on.
“So if I hadn’t walked into that warehouse; this language would have stayed forgotten?” Jack didn’t like the level of scorn that Ianto was able to put into that one word. Jon’s metaphor obviously wasn’t perfect, but, in his own way, he was trying to help.
“No. I never said that.” Jack wondered if Ianto was using his eyes to watch Jon glower. That the bond felt awfully smug for a moment led credence to the hypothesis. “Jack told me that you come into contact with Weevils multiple times a day. They aren’t any less a telepathic being than Picts are. You would have remembered at some point. It was just a question of when.”
Ianto was holding his hand a little bit tighter than was actually comfortable, but Jack wasn’t sure that he really wanted to bring direct attention to himself by complaining.
“The problem was that when your brain readjusted itself, it was too much, too quickly. When the telepathy actually started working, it was such a shock that it caused another part of your brain shut down. That’s why you went blind.” Jack sincerely hoped that he’d imagined the small note of glee in Jon’s voice when he explained revelation.
It was unlikely, because he definitely didn’t imagine Ianto’s reaction to it. Rage pulsed through the bond, and Ianto was practically quivering with it.
“Stop right there!” Jack was absolutely positive that he didn’t want this to go any further. Not when Ianto was feeling so unstable, and not when Jon was his guest. They were going to have to learn to tolerate each other enough to work together, but not now.
They weren’t going to get anything accomplished tonight. “I think that it is time for us to call it a night. Jon, I assume that you can see yourself back to the hotel.” His quarry met with a curt nod; that was good enough.
“Good. Then Ianto and I are going to go downstairs. We will see you here in the morning.” Part of him wanted to apologize for Ianto’s behavior, but Jon hadn’t been blameless, and Ianto’s anger was still pulsing through the bond making it hard to think.
He settled for just saying “goodnight.”
***
Ianto knew that he had been a complete prick even without feeling Jack’s dismay and embarrassment. He even knew that, in his own pompous way, Jack’s…friend…was just trying to help.
Still, he was blind! Somehow-now that those first few minutes of shock at hearing voices in his head were over-being blind seemed so much more of an immediate concern than the problem of relying on some crazy mental bond with Jack to stay sane.
Didn’t Dr. Jonathon Temple realize that everything that he had told Jack, Ianto had access to?
He didn’t need the situation to be explained again.
He just wanted to know how to fix it!
He wanted to be able to forget this stupid, bloody telepathic language and be able to see instead.
Could Dr. Temple do that? Because, if he could, then he would be worth listening to.
Ianto didn’t even remember climbing down the ladder and into Jack’s room. He did know that, all of a sudden, the anger turned into tears.
And, Jack was right there to hold him while he cried. They sat on the edge of the bed-rocking-while he made a snotty mess of Jack’s shirt.
It felt like the tears would never end.
It felt like nothing was ever going to be okay again.
But eventually the tears did end.
They ended while Jack was still whispering against his hair, and, if it didn’t feel like everything was going to be alright, it did feel like things might get better.
Ianto recovered enough to laugh a little at himself for using Jack as a tissue, and he was happy to feel the Jack had forgiven him for his earlier behavior.
Not forgotten, but forgiven.
He let Jack undress both of them and pulled the covers up over himself-emotionally drained and exhausted, despite having slept for most of the day.
Jack kissed him on the shoulder and started to quietly sing a lullaby. At any other time, he would have been embarrassed, but, lying there, with Jack pressed snuggly against his back and Jack’s voice singing him to sleep, he was simply grateful.
***
By the time that Andy arrived at the warehouse, Gwen had already been sitting on the hood of her car, waiting, for fifteen minutes. He parked beside her, barely managing to miss a puddle that would have sprayed up and soaked her jeans with muddy water.
“Sorry about that, Gwen. I had to…” While getting out of the car, Andy stepped straight into the puddle that he had just avoided while driving. “Shit.”
Gwen couldn’t help but snicker.
“Oh yes, very funny. I’m glad that I can provide you with free entertainment.” Andy made sure to create the largest splashes that he could as he stomped his way to the edge of the puddle. Gwen hopped off the car and onto the small path of dry land beside the warehouse.
“Me too, and now that you are finally here, we have an alien body to retrieve.” Gwen told herself that she’d waited for Andy because she wasn’t sure that she could lift the corpse alone, but honestly, she just wanted to avoid images of Jack and Ianto crying in an expanding puddle of goldish blood for as long as possible. She’d woken up that morning to the fading echoes of gunshots and Ianto’s screams; she wasn’t sure that she was ready to be faced with the Pict again.
Andy was looking at the bottoms of his trousers with disgust. “I have a date later too.” He complained.
Gwen looked him over. He was a little dressed up for disposing of alien bodies. “A date!” She hooked her arm through his and gave him one of her best smiles. “So, who’s the lucky woman? Anyone that I know?” she asked suggestively.
“No. She’s a nurse; I like her, and that is absolutely all that I am telling you.” Andy was grinning as he let go of her arm to tug open the warehouse door.
“Spoil sport.” He just held the door and motioned for her to go first.
There were too many tracks through the dust on the warehouse floor to count, evidence that emergency personnel had come and gone. The building was eerily quiet, and their steps echoed as they headed towards the place where Gwen remembered the Pict falling.
There was a golden stain on the floor that shone in the sunlight, but no body. Jack isn’t going to be happy about this.
There was a trail of the same shining, golden stain where the Pict had apparently dragged herself to the back door. Beyond that, the rain had washed away any traces of where she might have gone.
***
The next morning was better, despite Gwen’s bad news that they hadn’t been able to find the Pict’s body. Jack seemed convinced that the dying alien had managed to drag herself just far enough away from the warehouse to be a bother. He said that the corpse would turn up soon enough, and Ianto was inclined to trust his instincts.
There was still only darkness when Ianto opened his eyes, but the loss of his sight seemed like less of a raw, open wound.
Jack must have talked to Dr. Temple while he was still sleeping, because there was no more discussion of the nature of telepathy. Instead, they went right to work on shielding.
“Alright. The theory behind this is actually very simple. All you need to do is build a barrier around your mind.” The other man’s tone was even less antagonistic. Ianto wasn’t sure if he was more relieved by that change, or Jack was.
Jack didn’t like them fighting.
“What sort of barrier?” Ianto hoped that paying attention and asking honest questions might do something towards burying the hatchet that was the first day of their acquaintance.
“Something to allow you to control what goes into and out of your mind.” The other man’s tone didn’t sound gratifyingly pleased by the question, but it wasn’t put out either.
Ianto imagined a stone wall around his mind with a draw bridge that he could open and close at will.
They spent all morning visualizing the shields. Ianto made sure that each stone was in place and fit snuggly against its neighbors; he checked that the wall was protecting every corner of his mind, and he practiced opening and closing the drawbridge-controlling the flow of thoughts that he let into and out of his mind.
After lunch, Ianto was ready to test his new shielding out.
He checked everything one final time, and Jack let go of his hand. For a moment there was nothing. Just silence, blissful silence.
Then the pressure began to build.
The stones of his wall burst inwards, and the voices came with them.
***
Jack caught Ianto before his head could hit the edge of the coffee table. Jon had insisted that they sit on the floor, and Jack found himself slightly suspicious.
“You knew that was going to happen.” Jack did his best to move Ianto’s prone body around so that he had a clear line of sight to glare at Jon.
Jon glared right back. “I thought that it might. It takes most people a few tries to get shielding right. He held on for a few moments before passing out, that’s good. It means that he was doing something correctly.” Jack might have been mollified had Jon’s tone been any different.
“Remind me why I asked you to come here.” Jon propped his feet on the coffee table and stretched his arms back over his head.
“Because I know what I’m doing, and you don’t.” Jack didn’t even bother to reply to that. First of all, because it was true, and secondly because Ianto was beginning to stir in his arms. “Oh, should I have told you that he would probably only be out for a few minutes?”
Sometimes Jack wasn’t sure what he had ever seen in Jon, with his pouty lips and his bad attitude. He didn’t always have a bad attitude, remember. You made him this way.
Jack kissed Ianto’s temple and hoped that he wasn’t yet awake enough to notice any feelings coming through the bond.
Ianto’s eyes blinked open as if he was expecting to be able to see. He sat up quickly, and Jack moved so that they could be sitting side by side again.
“Why didn’t that work?” Ianto sounded calm, almost too calm. Jack watched Jon size them up-altering his opinions to incorporate new information.
“What were you picturing?” Jon’s back cracked when he put his feet down and leaned forward.
“A stone wall with a draw bridge.” Jack could have sworn that a little color rose to Ianto’s cheeks during that admission.
“No,no, no.” Jon shook his head; he sounded resigned, which made Jack wonder how many of his students in Glasgow had made the same mistake. “You’re not trying to keep any thoughts from coming in or leaving; you’re just supposed to control which ones do.”
Ianto’s posture was rigid, and Jack squeezed his hand, hoping that he wouldn’t let Jon rile him up again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Model your shields on a filter. You want the small things, unconscious thoughts like hunger, thirst, and fatigue, to get through. Most people don’t care too much about sharing those anyway, and, by doing so, you keep pressure from building up and damaging your shielding.”
Ianto closed his eyes, and, if Jack was reading the bond correctly, he was trying his best not to tune Jon out.
“You want to be able to control what size the holes in the filter are. That way you can decide what’s a small thought, and what’s a big thought, and change it to suit your purposes. With filter-based shielding, the only thing that you really have to worry about is very large thoughts, like mortal terror, or extreme pain. Those will rip a hole right through your shielding. Still, in my experience, a hole is easier to fix than a completely collapsed stone wall.”
***
Ianto wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or irritated that the filter worked better than his stone wall had.
He managed a whole five minutes without touching Jack before Gwen walked in with coffee, distracting him and tearing a hole in his shields.
When he woke up, Dr. Temple was picking apart a poppy seed muffin, and his coffee was already only luke-warm. It was still a significant improvement. He could feel Jack’s pride in his accomplishment, and relief that he was alright, over the bond.
Dr. Temple told him to strengthen the fibers in his filter. And, for the rest of the afternoon, and most of the evening, they repeated the same exercise over and over again.
By supper, Ianto could spend an entire hour not touching Jack.
Next, they tackled the bond.
Dr. Temple freely admitted that he didn’t have a great deal of experience with bonds like theirs-it was part of the reason that he had agreed to come to Cardiff-he had dedicated the last six years of his life to studying and teaching about psychic abilities though, and that made him the most qualified to make guesses about what was going on.
He told Ianto to meditate and look for the part of his mind where his emotions and other emotions, that he hadn’t thought that he was feeling, overlapped.
It was a lot easier than that.
He just looked for the part of his mind that felt like Jack.
If Jack was interpreting body signals correctly, that epiphany made Dr. Temple uneasy.
Next, he was told to imagine the bond as a tube running through his filter and between him and Jack. It was the most difficult thing that he had done all day, but Ianto managed to make the diameter of that tube smaller.
For the first time since waking up blind and a telepath, he didn’t feel like he was being overwhelmed by someone else’s thoughts and emotions.
He felt more like himself than he had since the entire mess got started.
***
Jon was actually slightly dismayed by how quickly Ianto picked up his lessons. He had never had a student find everything quite so easy before.
Then again, he had never taught a telepath as powerful as Ianto apparently was.
If Ianto could learn to shield and control his bond with Jack in the space of only a day, it was scary to think of what he would be capable of within a few years.
Jon flopped down on his hotel bed and stretched out. At least Jack had booked a decent hotel. They had king sized feather pillows, Egyptian cotton sheets, and the restaurant’s food was almost even palatable.
Part of him wanted to stay and see how Ianto’s abilities would develop, but the rest of him was glad that he would be leaving the following evening.
Being around Jack Harkness was wearisome. He had forgotten how attractive the man was. In fact, he had forgotten a lot of things about Jack. His laugh for instance, his love of coffee, even the way that he smelled. Six years ago, Jon had been sure that he would never forget the way that Jack Harkness smelled.
Being in Cardiff brought back the bad memories as well. He remembered how angry he had been at God, at the world, but especially at Jack when he got off the train in Cardiff station. He remembered walking outside and getting soaked to the bone, not being able to find a taxi, and eating probably the worst slice of pizza that he had ever had standing up in a chippy where he asked for directions to Jack’s address. Then, he remembered walking. Walking. And walking, And walking. He wasn’t sure how many times he had gotten lost that night, wandering an unfamiliar city in the dark. But, he did remember turning a corner and suddenly being there. He had pounded on the door for half an hour before Jack answered.
Now the rest of the night… no matter what else he forgot about Jack Harkness, the rest of that night he would always remember.
He had a boyfriend in Glasgow: a gorgeous boyfriend with a Scottish brogue and a small castle who would never ever leave him waiting outside in the rain for half an hour.
But, he had never found that same kind of passion with anyone else that he had had during that one night with Jack Harkness.
He thought that he had gotten over that, but maybe it was impossible to completely get over passion like that.
It didn’t mean that they were good for each other, or that it would ever have worked out, because they weren’t, and it wouldn’t have. Jon knew that.
That didn’t mean that it didn’t make him jealous to see them kiss.
***
By the next morning, Ianto had experienced the consequences of closing the bond completely, and had found a compromise where he both felt like he was in control of his own mind, and was connected enough to Jack not to feel the full weight of the voices pressing against his shields. He thought that they would hold, but he didn’t want to test them too rigorously until he had a better grasp of his abilities.
He didn’t need Dr. Temple to tell him that the next step was trying to read minds.
Jack was easy, but Gwen was a little more difficult. He figured out that he could reach out, look around, snatch the thoughts that he wanted to investigate more closely, and adjust the filter to let them through as he brought the thoughts back to his own mind.
The first time he found it difficult to adjust the filter quickly enough, and he was almost overwhelmed. The second time he wasn’t focusing completely on Gwen when he went to snatch a thought, and the same thing happened.
He deducted that if he was focusing completely on a single mind, the voices were less likely to inundate him-which meant that all he had to do when bringing the thoughts back was focus on the feel of his own mind while he adjusted the filter.
The third time that he tried it; it was easy. He watched Gwen try to use the coffee machine. He had always wondered what she did wrong. Now he knew.
He even figured out how to consciously use another person’s surface thoughts to help him get around the Hub; he “saw” through their eyes. It almost made him feel like he was no longer blind.
When he mistakenly stumbled upon a memory of Gwen and Dr. Temple eating lunch at an expensive restaurant and talking about Jack, he decided that it would be best only to read surface thoughts unless there were extenuating circumstances.
Despite what Jack had said, Gwen was right, tension did crackle between the two.
Dr. Temple arrived at the Hub late, claiming that he had overslept, but he sounded like he was lying. He smelled like coffee, and Ianto expected that he had actually been searching Cardiff for something that he deemed acceptable to eat.
The bag of French pastries that he slipped to Gwen, when Jack wasn’t looking, strengthened Ianto’s suspicions.
Ianto and Jack spent the morning talking about the way that they experienced the bond while Dr. Temple took furious notes, and Gwen puttered about-pretending not to be interested.
That had apparently been the price of Dr. Temple’s help with the shielding.
It seemed less like a trade and more like Dr. Temple doing Jack a favor, but Ianto didn’t call them out on it.
He understood pride.
***
When Jack and Gwen went to pick up some coffee, Ianto could have followed their minds out of the Hub and into Cardiff, but he made a conscious decision not to. Dr. Temple would be gone in a few hours. This would be their only chance to have a conversation alone.
“Alright.” The voice sounded resigned, and Ianto assumed that he hadn’t been exactly circumspect in his desire to talk to the man.
Dr. Temple, Jonathon, felt irritated at Jack for putting him in such an awkward position and more than a little off-balance faced with Jack’s current lover. Ianto was pleased to realize that, though the other man had good shields, without any sort of psychic ability to back them up, they were easy to get around.
“You obviously have something to say to me, so say it.”
“What’s between you and Jack?” Ianto couldn’t help himself; he hadn’t meant to ask that question, but he did want to know…badly.
Dr. Temple, on the other hand, had expected a question along those lines. That didn’t apparently make him feel any less discomfited answering.
“Guilt. Lust. The feeling that, if we had made different choices along the way, maybe everything would have worked out better, or at least differently. The remains of a friendship.” Jon trailed off, and Ianto imagined that the list was much, much longer.
“Then you aren’t in love with him?” Ianto was pleased with how even his own voice sounded.
“No.” There wasn’t even a pause, and the answer felt sincere. “I thought that I was at one time, but…” Ianto could hear the rustle of clothing as Jonathon shrugged. “I moved on.” That wasn’t completely honest, but it wasn’t a lie either. Until he had come to Cardiff, Dr. Jonathon Temple had really believed that he had gotten over Jack Harkness.
For a moment, Ianto was tempted to change his mind. He didn’t think that Jack would do anything to jeopardize their relationship, but, if Jack’s mental image of Jonathon Temple wasn’t an exaggeration-and Ianto doubted that it was, considering Gwen’s was practically identical-the man was gorgeous, and that made Ianto uneasy.
“I want you to talk to him.” Ianto kept his hands folded neatly over his lap, but raised his chin a little.
“To Jack?” Jonathon sounded and felt confused-reminding Ianto how close they were in age.
“Yes. There are things between you two that have never been resolved, and I want you to resolve them. They should be back any second with the coffee. I’ll take Gwen for a walk, and you can talk to Jack. An hour should be enough time?”
“Why are you doing this?” Jonathon sounded genuinely curious, and Ianto respected that enough to think about his answer. He had no idea why he was doing this.
“I want Jack to be happy.” He said it before he even knew that it was true.
***
When they returned with the coffee, the Hub was still standing. That was encouraging.
Jack hadn’t liked the way that Ianto seemed determined to get Jon alone. They were both sitting on the couch-on opposite ends, as far away from one another as possible-when the door rolled open.
They seemed to be discussing the weather. Despite having lived in Britain as long as he had, Jack still didn’t understand why every polite conversation had to include a discussion of the weather.
It was Britain. The weather was almost always the same. Damp.
Gwen seemed pleased to see them both still alive, and inserted her own opinion smoothly into the conversation while plopping the bag of bagels that they had picked up on the coffee table and collapsing onto the middle portion of the couch.
Jack pulled up a chair and handed Ianto a tea, just cream, no sugar. Gwen reached over to grab her coffee before he could even set the holder down on the table, but Jon waited patiently to be handed his.
They spent a few more minutes talking. Jon complimented the food even though he didn’t eat more than a quarter of his bagel, and his coffee was practically untouched.
Jack had forgotten how picky Jon was about food. He wondered what else he had forgotten.
“Jack, I’ve been cooped up in the Hub for the past three days, and I think that I need some air. Do you mind if Gwen and I go for a walk?” Jack raised an eyebrow. Unable to blink his big, blue eyes guilelessly and make all of the blood flowing to Jack’s brain reroute its course, Ianto’s machinations were a lot more obvious. He had an ulterior motivation, and Jack doubted that it was to get Gwen alone and have his wicked way with her.
Still, it would be interesting to see what came of Ianto’s plotting.
“Of course. Would you two pick up take away on your way back? We can warm it up later, and that way no one has to go on errands again until we take Jon to the train station.”
Gwen didn’t seem terribly keen on a long walk, but she wasn’t any less observant than the rest of them. She finished her bagel, grabbed her coffee, and took Ianto’s offered arm with a wave.
Jack tried not to watch them leave. They would be fine. Gwen was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and Ianto’s control over his telepathy had drastically improved. There was nothing to worry about.
Except, perhaps, why everyone wanted him and Jon to be left alone together.
***
Not for the first time, Jon wondered what it would have been like to have an actual relationship with Jack Harkness. Only this time he had a slightly less romantic view of what exactly that would entail.
He wasn’t sure what kind of person it took to come face to face with Jack’s long and illustrious past over and over again, to know that Jack had been with other people, loved other people. Either a saint or a masochist. Ianto was an attractive man; Jon took a moment to appreciate the sorts of images that thought evoked.
I don’t think that I could have been nearly as forgiving. Ianto just wanted Jack to be happy.
Jon was starting to realize just how unhappy he would have been as Jack’s significant other. It would have made me bitter.
Jon looked up. Jack was sprawled over the chair, drinking his coffee and looking absolutely shaggable.
“Do you know, I forgive you a little bit more each year…” Jack set down his coffee, and Jon leaned forwards.
They kissed.
It was a good kiss.
It wasn’t a great kiss.
They weren’t the same people that they had been. They had grown up, grown apart. Lost that spark that had made their one night together so unforgettable. Jon had been more honest with Ianto than he even knew at the time; he was over Jack Harkness.
Jack broke the kiss. “Thank you.” Ianto and Gwen had only been gone for a few minutes, and yet it felt like a great deal had been cleared up between them. They both sat back, and Jack started to sip his coffee again. Jon even hazarded another taste of his own, but made a face and set it down again. It was vile. He poked at his bagel, which was possibly even worse.
“You and I would never have worked; you have horrible taste in food.” Jack laughed, and what followed was a spirited discussion of the merits of take away that turned into a conversation about all of the places that they had been, food that they had eaten, and people that they had met in the last six years.
When the hour was up and Gwen and Ianto walked through the doorway-looking more than a little skeptical of what they would find-Jack was just starting a story about an Italian midget, a hamster, and a pizza that, within minutes, had them all laughing so hard that Gwen actually tumbled off the couch and onto the floor.
It made Jon miss his own team and charges in Glasgow. He wouldn’t let Jack Harkness be a stranger, but he was ready to go home.
***
After Jon left, things seemed more relaxed between Jack and Ianto than they had been since Tosh and Owen’s deaths. It took a weight off Gwen’s shoulder and made the Hub a much more pleasant place to work. Martha’s arrival made everything even easier. She made Jack seem younger, playful.
And she told Ianto that there was nothing physically wrong with his eyes. With time, his vision very well might come back.
So, of course, it only stood to reason that within the next week they found a lead on the Pict.
Andy had asked her to coffee in a not very subtle ploy to see if-even though there hadn’t been a body for him to help dispose of-he could still have a tour of the Hub. Gwen wasn’t sure what Jack had been thinking when he made that offer, but she figured that it was best to ask him before making any promises.
Gwen gave a noncommittal answer that Andy accepted rather more philosophically than she had expected him to.
“Hey, I’m just glad that I remember that he did offer.” Sometimes she forgot that Andy wasn’t nearly as stupid as he acted. Maybe it would be for the best if, next time, he had coffee with Jack.
Jack, who had been in an unusually good mood that morning-for reasons Gwen wasn’t sure that she wanted to contemplate-had given her the afternoon off, and Rhys wouldn’t be home from work for another hour.
She ordered one more coffee and a raisin scone, and listened to Andy prattle on about a crazy old grandma who swore that she saw an alien robbing her daughter’s house.
It would have been amusing if the grandma’s description of the alien hadn’t almost exactly matched her memory of the Pict.
“Andy, listen to me. This is important. I need you to find me the name and address of that old lady. Do you think that you can?” She felt the adrenaline start to rush through her veins.
There hadn’t been any recent kidnappings that fit the Pict’s pattern. Despite the lack of a body, they had assumed that she managed to crawl just far enough away to die in a place where it was a bloody bother for them to find her.
They’d thought that soon enough someone would call in the corpse, and they would go retrieve it. No harm done.
But apparently that wasn’t the case.
Apparently she was still alive.
“I dunno, Gwen. It wasn’t a big deal, really. Nothing was stolen, so I doubt that there is even a file anywhere. Abby might remember the names; she was the one that went to the house, but that’s the best that I can do.” If Andy though that Gwen’s sudden interest in an old grandmother’s delusions was unusual, he didn’t say anything of it. After all, Gwen was part of Torchwood, and Torchwood was a bit…odd.
Gwen set down her new coffee, deciding that it would probably be for the best if she didn’t drink it. “Alright. I think that I better make a quick stop at work before going home” She pushed the plate with her uneaten scone away from the edge of the table and slipped out of the booth.
“Sorry about bailing on you, Andy. You’ll get that information for me as soon as you can, right?” Andy was already pouring her coffee into his own mug and taking a skeptical bite out of the scone.
“Of course, I know how it is. Torchwood calls; Gwen Williams answers.” He ignored her look. Apparently looks lost their power over the course of a long acquaintance. “I’ll get you the information; don’t worry.”
She smiled, waved her fingers at him, and headed for the door. “Oh, and Gwen…” Her hand was on the doorknob, but she glanced back anyway. Andy had given up on the scone but was still drinking the coffee appreciatively.
“Don’t forget to ask your boss about that tour he promised me.”
***
“Jack! Ianto!” Gwen strode into the Hub. Martha had taken a long weekend to help her fiancé settle in and unpack, so she hoped that Jack and Ianto weren’t naked and in any place immediately visible.
“Gwen?” A fully-dressed Ianto walked out of the kitchenette carrying two mugs of coffee. She had no idea how he managed to work the coffee machine blind that no one else had ever been able to work with their sight fully functional, but Ianto insisted that he didn’t find it difficult at all.
“We weren’t expecting you back until tomorrow. Are you looking for Jack?” His hands were perfectly steady; there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the coffees while he waited for her to answer.
Gwen had never really appreciated how precise Ianto’s movements were until he had lost his sight. Now, he seemed to keep his body even more rigidly controlled. No movement was wasted.
She wondered what they got up to in the bedroom. If Jack ever made Ianto completely lose all of that precious control.
“Gwen?” Ianto’s voice didn’t give anything away, but she blushed-hoping that he hadn’t been reading her mind.
“I was looking for both of you actually. Apparently the Pict tried to rob someone.”
“You’re right, Jack will want to hear that. He’s in his office.” She followed Ianto as he made his way easily to Jack’s office, and she couldn’t help but wish she was able to see whether or not there were any ripples on the surface of the coffees now. Somehow she doubted it.
The door to Jack’s office was closed, so she reached around Ianto to open it. He lowered one of his arms so that she had a better view of the coffee. It didn’t even swash once.
“That’s uncanny. Are you sure that you’re human?” Ianto just laughed and shouldered open the door.
“Jack. Gwen found a lead on the Pict. And I have your coffee.”
***
The next day, Toshiko Sato’s replacement from Torchwood One arrived, and Jack tried not to notice Gwen’s betrayed looks, or Ianto’s silence over the bond. They had accepted Martha. They knew her, had worked with her; they understood that Jack had a special relationship with her that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with shared experiences they knew nothing about, everything to do with the Doctor.
This woman was a stranger.
He understood their feelings, but Torchwood Three needed the help. Ianto was good with computers, but he couldn’t work them blind, and he simply didn’t have the depth of knowledge that Jack needed in a tech.
They had a cardboard box full of unidentified alien gadgets that was sitting in a corner just waiting to explode, and, only the other day, Gwen had complained about the mainframe acting finicky.
Jack could identify things; he might even have been able to convince the mainframe to behave with sufficient time, but there simply weren’t enough hours for him to do that and everything else that needed doing.
Nonetheless, even Jack was slightly taken aback by their new recruit. He had expected her to…well… have legs.
Not that it seemed to slow her down at all.
“Marjory Hughes, I presume. I’m Captain Jack Harkness.” She rolled herself into the Hub and glanced around-apparently not impressed. He held out his hand to her, and she actually had the audacity to humph at him.
“Captain Jack Harkness was a pilot; he died in the war. And you don’t look anything like him. Call me Hughes.” She addressed the last part to all three of them, but didn’t seem any more interested in conversing with Ianto or Gwen than she had been in talking to Jack.
Jack gave Ianto a look. It appears that someone at Torchwood One holds a grudge.
You deserve it for not discussing this with us…sir.
Thanks for your support Ianto. I truly appreciate it.
Hughes sent a suspicious look between Jack and Ianto, and cut Gwen off before she could attempt her friendly, welcome to Torchwood Cardiff speech. “I heard that you have a box of alien tech. waiting. Would someone take me to it already?”
Gwen mumbled something about needing to visit the station, and Jack was suddenly interested in getting a start on the mound of paperwork that had been sitting on his desk for months, leaving Ianto with the dubious honor of showing their newest member around.
Jack was sure that he would hear about that later.
***
Ianto was fuming. Those two were lucky that he had a good idea where the box was, and that Hughes had eyes that he could use to figure out the specifics. The entire way she was cataloging gadgets lying around and following the information down technical tangents almost too quickly for him to follow.
For a moment, he was tempted to rip the information painfully from Jack’s brain, just out of spite. If he could even do that. He wasn’t sure that it was possible.
He wondered if listening to Hughes was what it would have been like hearing Tosh’s thoughts.
For some reason, he doubted it.
“Are you blind?” Hughes mind jumped so quickly from contemplating the remains of a sonic blaster-that Jack had been unsuccessfully trying to fix for awhile-to the question, that he didn’t even hear it coming.
He didn’t answer immediately. They were in front of the box now, and she was rustling about making noises of disgust.
The question wasn’t exactly polite. She wasn’t blind. She knew that he was. She had realized it in that first glance that she took of the Hub. Ianto figured that he could walk away and pretend that he hadn’t heard her quarry, but that wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t give him back his sight, and it most definitely wouldn’t bring Tosh back.
“Yes.” She filed the acknowledgment away along with the diameter of some copper tubing she would need to try to repair a children’s toy buried towards the middle of the box. “It hasn’t been very long. I’m sorry.”
Her apology was for the lack of tack in asking, not his loss of vision, had he been unable to read her thoughts, he might have missed the distinction.
“How do you know?” He had planned on accepting her apology and leaving to find Jack, but he was curious.
She stopped searching through the box and looked up at him. He could see himself through her eyes, and mostly he just looked tall. “You don’t stare straight ahead. You’re eyes still move as if you are expecting to be able to see something that you know is there.”
“I’m a telepath. If someone else is thinking about something, I can see it, in a manner of speaking.” He wasn’t sure why he told her. Maybe because Jack had accepted her as a part of the team. More likely it was because she had lost something, and, yet, there wasn’t self pity anywhere in her thoughts.
He didn’t even know her, but he already respected her.
Deducting that she wasn’t going to hear anything more about telepathy immediately, Hughes went back to looking through the box. She imagined herself shooing him away, and wondered, amused, if he got the message. Then, within seconds, she was totally engrossed in the contents of the box again.
Ianto left her to it. Oddly enough, he felt better for having talked with her.
His anger with Jack had dissipated, and now he just wanted to kiss the irritating twat and remind them both just how lucky they were.
Maybe he would wait until Jack had a few more hours to get completely fed up with pretending to do the paperwork though. That, after all, was only fair.
***
It took Andy two days, but he did come up with a name and an address for the old women.
Gwen went alone to talk to her. Jack and Ianto were closeted in Jack’s office, probably using “working on Ianto’s telepathy” as an excuse for office sex, and Hughes had emptied the box of tech, spread it out in over the floor, and appeared to be sorting it according to some system that only she, and maybe Ianto, had any hope of understanding. She had mumbled what sounded like a refusal while dismantling something that looked very sharp and potentially lethal.
So Gwen went alone.
When Mrs. Miller opened the door, Gwen realized that it was probably better that way. Being confronted with Team Torchwood’s newest member might have sent the poor thing to an early grave.
“Mrs. Miller, I’m Gwen Williams, with Torchwood. We spoke over the phone.” The wrinkles shifted into a smile, and Mrs. Miller opened the door further, waving her in.
“Come in. Come in. Do sit down. I’ll get us some tea.” Gwen did as she was told. Maybe her first impression of Mrs. Miller hadn’t been fair. Despite the wrinkles, she moved quickly and efficiently.
Gwen could hear cabinets open and close in the kitchen and what sounded like a kettle being set to boil. She looked around the room. There were pictures everywhere. Most were of two ginger-haired children: a girl and a boy who couldn’t have been more than a few years apart, and were obviously closely related. They had the same thin lips and slightly up-turned nose.
Mrs. Miller returned with tea and what Gwen suspected were homemade ginger snaps. There were definite perks to this job.
When their tea was poured, and Gwen had sampled more than a few of the biscuits, they started to talk about the attempted robbery.
“Mrs. Miller, I know that you’ve already told the story to the police, but I was hoping that you could tell it to me as well.” Gwen took one more guilty bite of a biscuit, and waited for a reply.
“Call me Janet, dear. And of course I will.” Janet set her tea down on the table with a click. “Do you see those two children?” She didn’t get up, but Janet motioned towards the pictures that Gwen had been looking at earlier. “Those are my grandchildren: Tanya and William, my two little angels. Now, usually my daughter brings them over to visit me every weekend, but lately she claims she has just been much too busy.” This was obviously a grievous turn of events in Janet’s book, and Gwen made all of the appropriate noises. “She’s never been too busy before, so I don’t see why she would be now.” Janet leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered: “I think that it’s a man.”
“No!” Inwardly Gwen smiled; she wouldn’t have been surprised if Rebecca Johnson was indeed seeing someone, and that was the reason that she suddenly didn’t have time to bring her children over to visit their grandmother.
“But that’s not the only thing.” Janet seemed sufficiently pleased with Gwen’s reaction and leaned back in her seat. She broke off a piece of ginger snap and popped it into her mouth. “Nobody has seen her lately-not her bible circle, not her book club; she hasn’t even been taking the children to church! Abigail, a friend of mine, lives next door to them, and she told me that Rebecca almost never leaves that house anymore!”
That sounded significantly less innocent.
“I think that she might be living with him!” Janet set her biscuit down and took another sip of tea. “Don’t be shy, dear. There are plenty more biscuits where those came from. Have another.”
Gwen put two more on her plate.
Mrs. Janet Miller may have been an even bigger lead than any of them could have hoped for. She owed Andy more than a coffee for this; she would do her best to see that he got that tour of the Hub that he was so keen on.
Part Three
Author: kauneinsuru
Recipient: EVERYONE!
***
Jack watched Ianto sleep. What a mess. He prided himself in knowing his team: where they lived, who they loved, their favorite type of pizza. He liked to know the big things and the little ones, and he wasn’t sure how he could possibly have missed this.
There must have been signs. Coffee before we knew that we were thirsty and take away before we knew that we were hungry… But, picking up on subliminal desires was easy; any low-level telepath was capable of it. For someone who was apparently as strong as Ianto, there had to have been other signs. Debilitating headaches?
Jack had never been able to read Ianto very well, maybe that should have been the first warning. Some people built up walls in their minds after traumatizing experiences. He’d assumed that was what Ianto had done after Canary Warf and never bothered to look deeper.
I guess that I was wrong. Jack wanted to move-to get up and pace the room until his thoughts quieted, but he didn’t dare.
Jon had made the consequences of such selfish action very clear:
“Right now he is using your shielding to help protect his mind, and focusing all of his abilities on this bond he forged between you. You’ll need to stay in close physical contact, at least until he has learned to build his own shields. Once he has done that, everything will become easier.”
“And if I can’t? What if there is an emergency outside of the Hub, and I have to leave?”
“There’s a good chance that he will go mad. It’s a small miracle that he hasn’t already. Only about one in ten people whose physic abilities manifest in this manner actually survive the shock with their mind intact. In this case, the fact that you-who have some physic ability and with whom he already had a relationship-were there is probably the only reason that he is still sane.”
And Jon. Jon made everything even more complicated. Jack knew that he should call Gwen to make sure that everything had been taken care of at the hotel, and to figure out-considering how long it was taking-where exactly they were, but his phone wasn’t in easy reach, and he didn’t want to leave Ianto. Plus, he trusted Jon to be a gentleman in a woman’s company. Really, he trusted Jon to be a gentleman in any company that didn’t include one Captain Jack Harkness.
Jon had probably invited Gwen to have dinner with him.
Jack wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of Gwen and Jon forging a united front, but there was nothing to be done about it now. If they decided to take over Torchwood Three, or Cardiff, or the world, Jack resolved to sit back, watch, and help to clear up the fallout once Ianto was better.
Imagining Gwen and Jon taking over the world put him in a slightly better mood.
***
“So…is he any good?” Gwen leaned her elbows on the table, and waited. It wasn’t very often that she had an opportunity like this. Ianto joked, but he never really shared anything. Though, he might have opened up to Tosh…
She tried not to follow that thought, and, instead, studied the man across from her.
Jonathon Temple really was an attractive specimen. If she hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t have minded taking him home with her-though he probably wouldn’t have accepted the invitation. She doubted that she had the right equipment.
“I don’t have a clue who you are talking about.” He might have sounded convincing, if he wasn’t smiling just the tiniest bit.
Their food came then, and another bottle of wine. Jon thanked the waiter politely, but didn’t look up. Not a flirt then. Not like Jack, at least.
“Don’t be coy with me. Jack, of course. The tension between you two practically crackles.” Gwen took another sip of her wine. It really was very good. She was glad that Jon had insisted on paying, because she was pretty sure that the entire meal was out of her price range. Though, judging by the designer jeans and t-shirt, and the well-tailored suit jacket that he had changed into, Jon could afford it just fine.
She wondered where the money came from. Working for Torchwood wasn’t a particularly lucrative career in her experience.
He had a London accent. Posh. Maybe he came from an old family.
“I’m afraid, my lady, I don’t kiss and tell.” If his smile, as he swirled his wine, was anything to go by, that was a “yes.”
Gwen sat back to enjoy her salad. Gorgeous, rich, charming, it was hard not to like him.
Part of her felt like she was being disloyal to Ianto, but Jon had insisted that he was only staying for three days. And, no matter how good-looking Jon was, Gwen didn’t believe that Jack would ever risk his relationship with Ianto for a quick fling. Besides, sexual tension didn’t seem to be the only thing that crackled between those two.
There was anger there as well. And mistrust.
It was time to change the line of questioning.
“You seem to know a lot about Jack. How?” Jon stopped meticulously cutting his steak, and set down his utensils.
“Torchwood Three is not the only branch with a file on Captain Jack Harkness.” For a moment, Jon’s eyes seemed colder, more detached. Gwen wondered what Jack had done to hurt Jonathon Temple as badly as he obviously had, and she knew that it was time to change the subject again.
They spent the rest of the afternoon sharing a fabulous meal and talking about Cardiff.
***
Jack spent the afternoon reading one of the murder mysteries that Ianto had finished and left lying about.
He had just about figured out who the killer was when Gwen and Jon arrived. Gwen at least, was a little tipsy. Jack wasn’t sure why that made him quite as angry as it did.
Jon climbed down the ladder first and gallantly held out his arm to help Gwen down off the last rung-not that she needed the help. They both looked happy and relaxed. Gwen giggled as Jon kissed the back of her hand before turning towards the bed. It made Jack jealous.
He didn’t have that sort of affect on either of them. At least not anymore.
“Gwen. I think that it would be best if you went upstairs and got some actual work done instead of getting drunk with our guest. The Pict’s body still has to be retrieved from the warehouse. Andy said that he could help with that this evening, and you need to retcon the victims along with whoever came into contact with the corpse. There is a list upstairs on the coffee table.” He had expected Gwen to be abashed, but she just shot him a knowing look and climbed back up the ladder.
Jon seemed completely impervious to his ire.
“Stop acting like I’ve stolen one of your children, Jack. I just took her to lunch.” With Gwen gone, Jon was back to his normal, grumpy self.
Jack thought about throwing the paperback at him but collected himself and set it on the bedside table instead.
“I liked that one.” Jack was surprised that Jon didn’t sound unfriendly. He didn’t sound friendly either, but it was a step up from overt hostility. “It has lots of twists. Have you figured out who the killer is yet?”
“Almost.” If, for whatever reason, Jon was willing to work together peaceably, than Jack would do his best to curtail the irrational jealousy. Jack followed Jon’s gaze and realized that he was playing unconsciously with Ianto’s hair. He met Jon’s eyes and didn’t stop.
“You should wake him up so that we can get started sorting this mess. I can only be in Cardiff for three days, and one is already almost over with.” It was a good point.
“Alright. We’ll meet you upstairs in fifteen minutes.”
“My memories must be faulty. I could have sworn you were capable of lasting longer than that.” For a moment the years fell away, and they were friends again.
Jon almost looked the same. A little older. A little wiser. His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled now.
Jack broke eye contact and the moment ended.
He listened to Jon climb the ladder back up into the Hub before turning to wake Ianto.
***
That first night was frustrating. Jon had taken an immediate dislike to Ianto, and the reverse was equally true.
They both went out of their way to be surly and uncooperative, and Jack felt like he was the fire hydrant stuck in the middle, being pissed on.
It didn’t help that without the bond under control, he was stuck with all of Ianto’s emotions on top of his own.
It wasn’t a very comfortable feeling.
Especially when the vast majority of those emotions were negative.
“Think of thoughts as words. You can project them, like you can project your voice. But to understand you, the person that you are talking to has to be able to speak the same language. For you, telepathy is like a language that you had spoken as a child but then forgotten. You’re brain knew it; you were capable of speaking it, you just weren’t aware of the fact that you could speak it. When you met the Pict, it was like having someone scream at you in that forgotten language. Your brain recognized that you should be able to speak it, and it readjusted itself so that you could.”
Ianto didn’t like being lectured. Jack could feel his reluctance to cooperate increase the longer that Jon went on.
“So if I hadn’t walked into that warehouse; this language would have stayed forgotten?” Jack didn’t like the level of scorn that Ianto was able to put into that one word. Jon’s metaphor obviously wasn’t perfect, but, in his own way, he was trying to help.
“No. I never said that.” Jack wondered if Ianto was using his eyes to watch Jon glower. That the bond felt awfully smug for a moment led credence to the hypothesis. “Jack told me that you come into contact with Weevils multiple times a day. They aren’t any less a telepathic being than Picts are. You would have remembered at some point. It was just a question of when.”
Ianto was holding his hand a little bit tighter than was actually comfortable, but Jack wasn’t sure that he really wanted to bring direct attention to himself by complaining.
“The problem was that when your brain readjusted itself, it was too much, too quickly. When the telepathy actually started working, it was such a shock that it caused another part of your brain shut down. That’s why you went blind.” Jack sincerely hoped that he’d imagined the small note of glee in Jon’s voice when he explained revelation.
It was unlikely, because he definitely didn’t imagine Ianto’s reaction to it. Rage pulsed through the bond, and Ianto was practically quivering with it.
“Stop right there!” Jack was absolutely positive that he didn’t want this to go any further. Not when Ianto was feeling so unstable, and not when Jon was his guest. They were going to have to learn to tolerate each other enough to work together, but not now.
They weren’t going to get anything accomplished tonight. “I think that it is time for us to call it a night. Jon, I assume that you can see yourself back to the hotel.” His quarry met with a curt nod; that was good enough.
“Good. Then Ianto and I are going to go downstairs. We will see you here in the morning.” Part of him wanted to apologize for Ianto’s behavior, but Jon hadn’t been blameless, and Ianto’s anger was still pulsing through the bond making it hard to think.
He settled for just saying “goodnight.”
***
Ianto knew that he had been a complete prick even without feeling Jack’s dismay and embarrassment. He even knew that, in his own pompous way, Jack’s…friend…was just trying to help.
Still, he was blind! Somehow-now that those first few minutes of shock at hearing voices in his head were over-being blind seemed so much more of an immediate concern than the problem of relying on some crazy mental bond with Jack to stay sane.
Didn’t Dr. Jonathon Temple realize that everything that he had told Jack, Ianto had access to?
He didn’t need the situation to be explained again.
He just wanted to know how to fix it!
He wanted to be able to forget this stupid, bloody telepathic language and be able to see instead.
Could Dr. Temple do that? Because, if he could, then he would be worth listening to.
Ianto didn’t even remember climbing down the ladder and into Jack’s room. He did know that, all of a sudden, the anger turned into tears.
And, Jack was right there to hold him while he cried. They sat on the edge of the bed-rocking-while he made a snotty mess of Jack’s shirt.
It felt like the tears would never end.
It felt like nothing was ever going to be okay again.
But eventually the tears did end.
They ended while Jack was still whispering against his hair, and, if it didn’t feel like everything was going to be alright, it did feel like things might get better.
Ianto recovered enough to laugh a little at himself for using Jack as a tissue, and he was happy to feel the Jack had forgiven him for his earlier behavior.
Not forgotten, but forgiven.
He let Jack undress both of them and pulled the covers up over himself-emotionally drained and exhausted, despite having slept for most of the day.
Jack kissed him on the shoulder and started to quietly sing a lullaby. At any other time, he would have been embarrassed, but, lying there, with Jack pressed snuggly against his back and Jack’s voice singing him to sleep, he was simply grateful.
***
By the time that Andy arrived at the warehouse, Gwen had already been sitting on the hood of her car, waiting, for fifteen minutes. He parked beside her, barely managing to miss a puddle that would have sprayed up and soaked her jeans with muddy water.
“Sorry about that, Gwen. I had to…” While getting out of the car, Andy stepped straight into the puddle that he had just avoided while driving. “Shit.”
Gwen couldn’t help but snicker.
“Oh yes, very funny. I’m glad that I can provide you with free entertainment.” Andy made sure to create the largest splashes that he could as he stomped his way to the edge of the puddle. Gwen hopped off the car and onto the small path of dry land beside the warehouse.
“Me too, and now that you are finally here, we have an alien body to retrieve.” Gwen told herself that she’d waited for Andy because she wasn’t sure that she could lift the corpse alone, but honestly, she just wanted to avoid images of Jack and Ianto crying in an expanding puddle of goldish blood for as long as possible. She’d woken up that morning to the fading echoes of gunshots and Ianto’s screams; she wasn’t sure that she was ready to be faced with the Pict again.
Andy was looking at the bottoms of his trousers with disgust. “I have a date later too.” He complained.
Gwen looked him over. He was a little dressed up for disposing of alien bodies. “A date!” She hooked her arm through his and gave him one of her best smiles. “So, who’s the lucky woman? Anyone that I know?” she asked suggestively.
“No. She’s a nurse; I like her, and that is absolutely all that I am telling you.” Andy was grinning as he let go of her arm to tug open the warehouse door.
“Spoil sport.” He just held the door and motioned for her to go first.
There were too many tracks through the dust on the warehouse floor to count, evidence that emergency personnel had come and gone. The building was eerily quiet, and their steps echoed as they headed towards the place where Gwen remembered the Pict falling.
There was a golden stain on the floor that shone in the sunlight, but no body. Jack isn’t going to be happy about this.
There was a trail of the same shining, golden stain where the Pict had apparently dragged herself to the back door. Beyond that, the rain had washed away any traces of where she might have gone.
***
The next morning was better, despite Gwen’s bad news that they hadn’t been able to find the Pict’s body. Jack seemed convinced that the dying alien had managed to drag herself just far enough away from the warehouse to be a bother. He said that the corpse would turn up soon enough, and Ianto was inclined to trust his instincts.
There was still only darkness when Ianto opened his eyes, but the loss of his sight seemed like less of a raw, open wound.
Jack must have talked to Dr. Temple while he was still sleeping, because there was no more discussion of the nature of telepathy. Instead, they went right to work on shielding.
“Alright. The theory behind this is actually very simple. All you need to do is build a barrier around your mind.” The other man’s tone was even less antagonistic. Ianto wasn’t sure if he was more relieved by that change, or Jack was.
Jack didn’t like them fighting.
“What sort of barrier?” Ianto hoped that paying attention and asking honest questions might do something towards burying the hatchet that was the first day of their acquaintance.
“Something to allow you to control what goes into and out of your mind.” The other man’s tone didn’t sound gratifyingly pleased by the question, but it wasn’t put out either.
Ianto imagined a stone wall around his mind with a draw bridge that he could open and close at will.
They spent all morning visualizing the shields. Ianto made sure that each stone was in place and fit snuggly against its neighbors; he checked that the wall was protecting every corner of his mind, and he practiced opening and closing the drawbridge-controlling the flow of thoughts that he let into and out of his mind.
After lunch, Ianto was ready to test his new shielding out.
He checked everything one final time, and Jack let go of his hand. For a moment there was nothing. Just silence, blissful silence.
Then the pressure began to build.
The stones of his wall burst inwards, and the voices came with them.
***
Jack caught Ianto before his head could hit the edge of the coffee table. Jon had insisted that they sit on the floor, and Jack found himself slightly suspicious.
“You knew that was going to happen.” Jack did his best to move Ianto’s prone body around so that he had a clear line of sight to glare at Jon.
Jon glared right back. “I thought that it might. It takes most people a few tries to get shielding right. He held on for a few moments before passing out, that’s good. It means that he was doing something correctly.” Jack might have been mollified had Jon’s tone been any different.
“Remind me why I asked you to come here.” Jon propped his feet on the coffee table and stretched his arms back over his head.
“Because I know what I’m doing, and you don’t.” Jack didn’t even bother to reply to that. First of all, because it was true, and secondly because Ianto was beginning to stir in his arms. “Oh, should I have told you that he would probably only be out for a few minutes?”
Sometimes Jack wasn’t sure what he had ever seen in Jon, with his pouty lips and his bad attitude. He didn’t always have a bad attitude, remember. You made him this way.
Jack kissed Ianto’s temple and hoped that he wasn’t yet awake enough to notice any feelings coming through the bond.
Ianto’s eyes blinked open as if he was expecting to be able to see. He sat up quickly, and Jack moved so that they could be sitting side by side again.
“Why didn’t that work?” Ianto sounded calm, almost too calm. Jack watched Jon size them up-altering his opinions to incorporate new information.
“What were you picturing?” Jon’s back cracked when he put his feet down and leaned forward.
“A stone wall with a draw bridge.” Jack could have sworn that a little color rose to Ianto’s cheeks during that admission.
“No,no, no.” Jon shook his head; he sounded resigned, which made Jack wonder how many of his students in Glasgow had made the same mistake. “You’re not trying to keep any thoughts from coming in or leaving; you’re just supposed to control which ones do.”
Ianto’s posture was rigid, and Jack squeezed his hand, hoping that he wouldn’t let Jon rile him up again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Model your shields on a filter. You want the small things, unconscious thoughts like hunger, thirst, and fatigue, to get through. Most people don’t care too much about sharing those anyway, and, by doing so, you keep pressure from building up and damaging your shielding.”
Ianto closed his eyes, and, if Jack was reading the bond correctly, he was trying his best not to tune Jon out.
“You want to be able to control what size the holes in the filter are. That way you can decide what’s a small thought, and what’s a big thought, and change it to suit your purposes. With filter-based shielding, the only thing that you really have to worry about is very large thoughts, like mortal terror, or extreme pain. Those will rip a hole right through your shielding. Still, in my experience, a hole is easier to fix than a completely collapsed stone wall.”
***
Ianto wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or irritated that the filter worked better than his stone wall had.
He managed a whole five minutes without touching Jack before Gwen walked in with coffee, distracting him and tearing a hole in his shields.
When he woke up, Dr. Temple was picking apart a poppy seed muffin, and his coffee was already only luke-warm. It was still a significant improvement. He could feel Jack’s pride in his accomplishment, and relief that he was alright, over the bond.
Dr. Temple told him to strengthen the fibers in his filter. And, for the rest of the afternoon, and most of the evening, they repeated the same exercise over and over again.
By supper, Ianto could spend an entire hour not touching Jack.
Next, they tackled the bond.
Dr. Temple freely admitted that he didn’t have a great deal of experience with bonds like theirs-it was part of the reason that he had agreed to come to Cardiff-he had dedicated the last six years of his life to studying and teaching about psychic abilities though, and that made him the most qualified to make guesses about what was going on.
He told Ianto to meditate and look for the part of his mind where his emotions and other emotions, that he hadn’t thought that he was feeling, overlapped.
It was a lot easier than that.
He just looked for the part of his mind that felt like Jack.
If Jack was interpreting body signals correctly, that epiphany made Dr. Temple uneasy.
Next, he was told to imagine the bond as a tube running through his filter and between him and Jack. It was the most difficult thing that he had done all day, but Ianto managed to make the diameter of that tube smaller.
For the first time since waking up blind and a telepath, he didn’t feel like he was being overwhelmed by someone else’s thoughts and emotions.
He felt more like himself than he had since the entire mess got started.
***
Jon was actually slightly dismayed by how quickly Ianto picked up his lessons. He had never had a student find everything quite so easy before.
Then again, he had never taught a telepath as powerful as Ianto apparently was.
If Ianto could learn to shield and control his bond with Jack in the space of only a day, it was scary to think of what he would be capable of within a few years.
Jon flopped down on his hotel bed and stretched out. At least Jack had booked a decent hotel. They had king sized feather pillows, Egyptian cotton sheets, and the restaurant’s food was almost even palatable.
Part of him wanted to stay and see how Ianto’s abilities would develop, but the rest of him was glad that he would be leaving the following evening.
Being around Jack Harkness was wearisome. He had forgotten how attractive the man was. In fact, he had forgotten a lot of things about Jack. His laugh for instance, his love of coffee, even the way that he smelled. Six years ago, Jon had been sure that he would never forget the way that Jack Harkness smelled.
Being in Cardiff brought back the bad memories as well. He remembered how angry he had been at God, at the world, but especially at Jack when he got off the train in Cardiff station. He remembered walking outside and getting soaked to the bone, not being able to find a taxi, and eating probably the worst slice of pizza that he had ever had standing up in a chippy where he asked for directions to Jack’s address. Then, he remembered walking. Walking. And walking, And walking. He wasn’t sure how many times he had gotten lost that night, wandering an unfamiliar city in the dark. But, he did remember turning a corner and suddenly being there. He had pounded on the door for half an hour before Jack answered.
Now the rest of the night… no matter what else he forgot about Jack Harkness, the rest of that night he would always remember.
He had a boyfriend in Glasgow: a gorgeous boyfriend with a Scottish brogue and a small castle who would never ever leave him waiting outside in the rain for half an hour.
But, he had never found that same kind of passion with anyone else that he had had during that one night with Jack Harkness.
He thought that he had gotten over that, but maybe it was impossible to completely get over passion like that.
It didn’t mean that they were good for each other, or that it would ever have worked out, because they weren’t, and it wouldn’t have. Jon knew that.
That didn’t mean that it didn’t make him jealous to see them kiss.
***
By the next morning, Ianto had experienced the consequences of closing the bond completely, and had found a compromise where he both felt like he was in control of his own mind, and was connected enough to Jack not to feel the full weight of the voices pressing against his shields. He thought that they would hold, but he didn’t want to test them too rigorously until he had a better grasp of his abilities.
He didn’t need Dr. Temple to tell him that the next step was trying to read minds.
Jack was easy, but Gwen was a little more difficult. He figured out that he could reach out, look around, snatch the thoughts that he wanted to investigate more closely, and adjust the filter to let them through as he brought the thoughts back to his own mind.
The first time he found it difficult to adjust the filter quickly enough, and he was almost overwhelmed. The second time he wasn’t focusing completely on Gwen when he went to snatch a thought, and the same thing happened.
He deducted that if he was focusing completely on a single mind, the voices were less likely to inundate him-which meant that all he had to do when bringing the thoughts back was focus on the feel of his own mind while he adjusted the filter.
The third time that he tried it; it was easy. He watched Gwen try to use the coffee machine. He had always wondered what she did wrong. Now he knew.
He even figured out how to consciously use another person’s surface thoughts to help him get around the Hub; he “saw” through their eyes. It almost made him feel like he was no longer blind.
When he mistakenly stumbled upon a memory of Gwen and Dr. Temple eating lunch at an expensive restaurant and talking about Jack, he decided that it would be best only to read surface thoughts unless there were extenuating circumstances.
Despite what Jack had said, Gwen was right, tension did crackle between the two.
Dr. Temple arrived at the Hub late, claiming that he had overslept, but he sounded like he was lying. He smelled like coffee, and Ianto expected that he had actually been searching Cardiff for something that he deemed acceptable to eat.
The bag of French pastries that he slipped to Gwen, when Jack wasn’t looking, strengthened Ianto’s suspicions.
Ianto and Jack spent the morning talking about the way that they experienced the bond while Dr. Temple took furious notes, and Gwen puttered about-pretending not to be interested.
That had apparently been the price of Dr. Temple’s help with the shielding.
It seemed less like a trade and more like Dr. Temple doing Jack a favor, but Ianto didn’t call them out on it.
He understood pride.
***
When Jack and Gwen went to pick up some coffee, Ianto could have followed their minds out of the Hub and into Cardiff, but he made a conscious decision not to. Dr. Temple would be gone in a few hours. This would be their only chance to have a conversation alone.
“Alright.” The voice sounded resigned, and Ianto assumed that he hadn’t been exactly circumspect in his desire to talk to the man.
Dr. Temple, Jonathon, felt irritated at Jack for putting him in such an awkward position and more than a little off-balance faced with Jack’s current lover. Ianto was pleased to realize that, though the other man had good shields, without any sort of psychic ability to back them up, they were easy to get around.
“You obviously have something to say to me, so say it.”
“What’s between you and Jack?” Ianto couldn’t help himself; he hadn’t meant to ask that question, but he did want to know…badly.
Dr. Temple, on the other hand, had expected a question along those lines. That didn’t apparently make him feel any less discomfited answering.
“Guilt. Lust. The feeling that, if we had made different choices along the way, maybe everything would have worked out better, or at least differently. The remains of a friendship.” Jon trailed off, and Ianto imagined that the list was much, much longer.
“Then you aren’t in love with him?” Ianto was pleased with how even his own voice sounded.
“No.” There wasn’t even a pause, and the answer felt sincere. “I thought that I was at one time, but…” Ianto could hear the rustle of clothing as Jonathon shrugged. “I moved on.” That wasn’t completely honest, but it wasn’t a lie either. Until he had come to Cardiff, Dr. Jonathon Temple had really believed that he had gotten over Jack Harkness.
For a moment, Ianto was tempted to change his mind. He didn’t think that Jack would do anything to jeopardize their relationship, but, if Jack’s mental image of Jonathon Temple wasn’t an exaggeration-and Ianto doubted that it was, considering Gwen’s was practically identical-the man was gorgeous, and that made Ianto uneasy.
“I want you to talk to him.” Ianto kept his hands folded neatly over his lap, but raised his chin a little.
“To Jack?” Jonathon sounded and felt confused-reminding Ianto how close they were in age.
“Yes. There are things between you two that have never been resolved, and I want you to resolve them. They should be back any second with the coffee. I’ll take Gwen for a walk, and you can talk to Jack. An hour should be enough time?”
“Why are you doing this?” Jonathon sounded genuinely curious, and Ianto respected that enough to think about his answer. He had no idea why he was doing this.
“I want Jack to be happy.” He said it before he even knew that it was true.
***
When they returned with the coffee, the Hub was still standing. That was encouraging.
Jack hadn’t liked the way that Ianto seemed determined to get Jon alone. They were both sitting on the couch-on opposite ends, as far away from one another as possible-when the door rolled open.
They seemed to be discussing the weather. Despite having lived in Britain as long as he had, Jack still didn’t understand why every polite conversation had to include a discussion of the weather.
It was Britain. The weather was almost always the same. Damp.
Gwen seemed pleased to see them both still alive, and inserted her own opinion smoothly into the conversation while plopping the bag of bagels that they had picked up on the coffee table and collapsing onto the middle portion of the couch.
Jack pulled up a chair and handed Ianto a tea, just cream, no sugar. Gwen reached over to grab her coffee before he could even set the holder down on the table, but Jon waited patiently to be handed his.
They spent a few more minutes talking. Jon complimented the food even though he didn’t eat more than a quarter of his bagel, and his coffee was practically untouched.
Jack had forgotten how picky Jon was about food. He wondered what else he had forgotten.
“Jack, I’ve been cooped up in the Hub for the past three days, and I think that I need some air. Do you mind if Gwen and I go for a walk?” Jack raised an eyebrow. Unable to blink his big, blue eyes guilelessly and make all of the blood flowing to Jack’s brain reroute its course, Ianto’s machinations were a lot more obvious. He had an ulterior motivation, and Jack doubted that it was to get Gwen alone and have his wicked way with her.
Still, it would be interesting to see what came of Ianto’s plotting.
“Of course. Would you two pick up take away on your way back? We can warm it up later, and that way no one has to go on errands again until we take Jon to the train station.”
Gwen didn’t seem terribly keen on a long walk, but she wasn’t any less observant than the rest of them. She finished her bagel, grabbed her coffee, and took Ianto’s offered arm with a wave.
Jack tried not to watch them leave. They would be fine. Gwen was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and Ianto’s control over his telepathy had drastically improved. There was nothing to worry about.
Except, perhaps, why everyone wanted him and Jon to be left alone together.
***
Not for the first time, Jon wondered what it would have been like to have an actual relationship with Jack Harkness. Only this time he had a slightly less romantic view of what exactly that would entail.
He wasn’t sure what kind of person it took to come face to face with Jack’s long and illustrious past over and over again, to know that Jack had been with other people, loved other people. Either a saint or a masochist. Ianto was an attractive man; Jon took a moment to appreciate the sorts of images that thought evoked.
I don’t think that I could have been nearly as forgiving. Ianto just wanted Jack to be happy.
Jon was starting to realize just how unhappy he would have been as Jack’s significant other. It would have made me bitter.
Jon looked up. Jack was sprawled over the chair, drinking his coffee and looking absolutely shaggable.
“Do you know, I forgive you a little bit more each year…” Jack set down his coffee, and Jon leaned forwards.
They kissed.
It was a good kiss.
It wasn’t a great kiss.
They weren’t the same people that they had been. They had grown up, grown apart. Lost that spark that had made their one night together so unforgettable. Jon had been more honest with Ianto than he even knew at the time; he was over Jack Harkness.
Jack broke the kiss. “Thank you.” Ianto and Gwen had only been gone for a few minutes, and yet it felt like a great deal had been cleared up between them. They both sat back, and Jack started to sip his coffee again. Jon even hazarded another taste of his own, but made a face and set it down again. It was vile. He poked at his bagel, which was possibly even worse.
“You and I would never have worked; you have horrible taste in food.” Jack laughed, and what followed was a spirited discussion of the merits of take away that turned into a conversation about all of the places that they had been, food that they had eaten, and people that they had met in the last six years.
When the hour was up and Gwen and Ianto walked through the doorway-looking more than a little skeptical of what they would find-Jack was just starting a story about an Italian midget, a hamster, and a pizza that, within minutes, had them all laughing so hard that Gwen actually tumbled off the couch and onto the floor.
It made Jon miss his own team and charges in Glasgow. He wouldn’t let Jack Harkness be a stranger, but he was ready to go home.
***
After Jon left, things seemed more relaxed between Jack and Ianto than they had been since Tosh and Owen’s deaths. It took a weight off Gwen’s shoulder and made the Hub a much more pleasant place to work. Martha’s arrival made everything even easier. She made Jack seem younger, playful.
And she told Ianto that there was nothing physically wrong with his eyes. With time, his vision very well might come back.
So, of course, it only stood to reason that within the next week they found a lead on the Pict.
Andy had asked her to coffee in a not very subtle ploy to see if-even though there hadn’t been a body for him to help dispose of-he could still have a tour of the Hub. Gwen wasn’t sure what Jack had been thinking when he made that offer, but she figured that it was best to ask him before making any promises.
Gwen gave a noncommittal answer that Andy accepted rather more philosophically than she had expected him to.
“Hey, I’m just glad that I remember that he did offer.” Sometimes she forgot that Andy wasn’t nearly as stupid as he acted. Maybe it would be for the best if, next time, he had coffee with Jack.
Jack, who had been in an unusually good mood that morning-for reasons Gwen wasn’t sure that she wanted to contemplate-had given her the afternoon off, and Rhys wouldn’t be home from work for another hour.
She ordered one more coffee and a raisin scone, and listened to Andy prattle on about a crazy old grandma who swore that she saw an alien robbing her daughter’s house.
It would have been amusing if the grandma’s description of the alien hadn’t almost exactly matched her memory of the Pict.
“Andy, listen to me. This is important. I need you to find me the name and address of that old lady. Do you think that you can?” She felt the adrenaline start to rush through her veins.
There hadn’t been any recent kidnappings that fit the Pict’s pattern. Despite the lack of a body, they had assumed that she managed to crawl just far enough away to die in a place where it was a bloody bother for them to find her.
They’d thought that soon enough someone would call in the corpse, and they would go retrieve it. No harm done.
But apparently that wasn’t the case.
Apparently she was still alive.
“I dunno, Gwen. It wasn’t a big deal, really. Nothing was stolen, so I doubt that there is even a file anywhere. Abby might remember the names; she was the one that went to the house, but that’s the best that I can do.” If Andy though that Gwen’s sudden interest in an old grandmother’s delusions was unusual, he didn’t say anything of it. After all, Gwen was part of Torchwood, and Torchwood was a bit…odd.
Gwen set down her new coffee, deciding that it would probably be for the best if she didn’t drink it. “Alright. I think that I better make a quick stop at work before going home” She pushed the plate with her uneaten scone away from the edge of the table and slipped out of the booth.
“Sorry about bailing on you, Andy. You’ll get that information for me as soon as you can, right?” Andy was already pouring her coffee into his own mug and taking a skeptical bite out of the scone.
“Of course, I know how it is. Torchwood calls; Gwen Williams answers.” He ignored her look. Apparently looks lost their power over the course of a long acquaintance. “I’ll get you the information; don’t worry.”
She smiled, waved her fingers at him, and headed for the door. “Oh, and Gwen…” Her hand was on the doorknob, but she glanced back anyway. Andy had given up on the scone but was still drinking the coffee appreciatively.
“Don’t forget to ask your boss about that tour he promised me.”
***
“Jack! Ianto!” Gwen strode into the Hub. Martha had taken a long weekend to help her fiancé settle in and unpack, so she hoped that Jack and Ianto weren’t naked and in any place immediately visible.
“Gwen?” A fully-dressed Ianto walked out of the kitchenette carrying two mugs of coffee. She had no idea how he managed to work the coffee machine blind that no one else had ever been able to work with their sight fully functional, but Ianto insisted that he didn’t find it difficult at all.
“We weren’t expecting you back until tomorrow. Are you looking for Jack?” His hands were perfectly steady; there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the coffees while he waited for her to answer.
Gwen had never really appreciated how precise Ianto’s movements were until he had lost his sight. Now, he seemed to keep his body even more rigidly controlled. No movement was wasted.
She wondered what they got up to in the bedroom. If Jack ever made Ianto completely lose all of that precious control.
“Gwen?” Ianto’s voice didn’t give anything away, but she blushed-hoping that he hadn’t been reading her mind.
“I was looking for both of you actually. Apparently the Pict tried to rob someone.”
“You’re right, Jack will want to hear that. He’s in his office.” She followed Ianto as he made his way easily to Jack’s office, and she couldn’t help but wish she was able to see whether or not there were any ripples on the surface of the coffees now. Somehow she doubted it.
The door to Jack’s office was closed, so she reached around Ianto to open it. He lowered one of his arms so that she had a better view of the coffee. It didn’t even swash once.
“That’s uncanny. Are you sure that you’re human?” Ianto just laughed and shouldered open the door.
“Jack. Gwen found a lead on the Pict. And I have your coffee.”
***
The next day, Toshiko Sato’s replacement from Torchwood One arrived, and Jack tried not to notice Gwen’s betrayed looks, or Ianto’s silence over the bond. They had accepted Martha. They knew her, had worked with her; they understood that Jack had a special relationship with her that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with shared experiences they knew nothing about, everything to do with the Doctor.
This woman was a stranger.
He understood their feelings, but Torchwood Three needed the help. Ianto was good with computers, but he couldn’t work them blind, and he simply didn’t have the depth of knowledge that Jack needed in a tech.
They had a cardboard box full of unidentified alien gadgets that was sitting in a corner just waiting to explode, and, only the other day, Gwen had complained about the mainframe acting finicky.
Jack could identify things; he might even have been able to convince the mainframe to behave with sufficient time, but there simply weren’t enough hours for him to do that and everything else that needed doing.
Nonetheless, even Jack was slightly taken aback by their new recruit. He had expected her to…well… have legs.
Not that it seemed to slow her down at all.
“Marjory Hughes, I presume. I’m Captain Jack Harkness.” She rolled herself into the Hub and glanced around-apparently not impressed. He held out his hand to her, and she actually had the audacity to humph at him.
“Captain Jack Harkness was a pilot; he died in the war. And you don’t look anything like him. Call me Hughes.” She addressed the last part to all three of them, but didn’t seem any more interested in conversing with Ianto or Gwen than she had been in talking to Jack.
Jack gave Ianto a look. It appears that someone at Torchwood One holds a grudge.
You deserve it for not discussing this with us…sir.
Thanks for your support Ianto. I truly appreciate it.
Hughes sent a suspicious look between Jack and Ianto, and cut Gwen off before she could attempt her friendly, welcome to Torchwood Cardiff speech. “I heard that you have a box of alien tech. waiting. Would someone take me to it already?”
Gwen mumbled something about needing to visit the station, and Jack was suddenly interested in getting a start on the mound of paperwork that had been sitting on his desk for months, leaving Ianto with the dubious honor of showing their newest member around.
Jack was sure that he would hear about that later.
***
Ianto was fuming. Those two were lucky that he had a good idea where the box was, and that Hughes had eyes that he could use to figure out the specifics. The entire way she was cataloging gadgets lying around and following the information down technical tangents almost too quickly for him to follow.
For a moment, he was tempted to rip the information painfully from Jack’s brain, just out of spite. If he could even do that. He wasn’t sure that it was possible.
He wondered if listening to Hughes was what it would have been like hearing Tosh’s thoughts.
For some reason, he doubted it.
“Are you blind?” Hughes mind jumped so quickly from contemplating the remains of a sonic blaster-that Jack had been unsuccessfully trying to fix for awhile-to the question, that he didn’t even hear it coming.
He didn’t answer immediately. They were in front of the box now, and she was rustling about making noises of disgust.
The question wasn’t exactly polite. She wasn’t blind. She knew that he was. She had realized it in that first glance that she took of the Hub. Ianto figured that he could walk away and pretend that he hadn’t heard her quarry, but that wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t give him back his sight, and it most definitely wouldn’t bring Tosh back.
“Yes.” She filed the acknowledgment away along with the diameter of some copper tubing she would need to try to repair a children’s toy buried towards the middle of the box. “It hasn’t been very long. I’m sorry.”
Her apology was for the lack of tack in asking, not his loss of vision, had he been unable to read her thoughts, he might have missed the distinction.
“How do you know?” He had planned on accepting her apology and leaving to find Jack, but he was curious.
She stopped searching through the box and looked up at him. He could see himself through her eyes, and mostly he just looked tall. “You don’t stare straight ahead. You’re eyes still move as if you are expecting to be able to see something that you know is there.”
“I’m a telepath. If someone else is thinking about something, I can see it, in a manner of speaking.” He wasn’t sure why he told her. Maybe because Jack had accepted her as a part of the team. More likely it was because she had lost something, and, yet, there wasn’t self pity anywhere in her thoughts.
He didn’t even know her, but he already respected her.
Deducting that she wasn’t going to hear anything more about telepathy immediately, Hughes went back to looking through the box. She imagined herself shooing him away, and wondered, amused, if he got the message. Then, within seconds, she was totally engrossed in the contents of the box again.
Ianto left her to it. Oddly enough, he felt better for having talked with her.
His anger with Jack had dissipated, and now he just wanted to kiss the irritating twat and remind them both just how lucky they were.
Maybe he would wait until Jack had a few more hours to get completely fed up with pretending to do the paperwork though. That, after all, was only fair.
***
It took Andy two days, but he did come up with a name and an address for the old women.
Gwen went alone to talk to her. Jack and Ianto were closeted in Jack’s office, probably using “working on Ianto’s telepathy” as an excuse for office sex, and Hughes had emptied the box of tech, spread it out in over the floor, and appeared to be sorting it according to some system that only she, and maybe Ianto, had any hope of understanding. She had mumbled what sounded like a refusal while dismantling something that looked very sharp and potentially lethal.
So Gwen went alone.
When Mrs. Miller opened the door, Gwen realized that it was probably better that way. Being confronted with Team Torchwood’s newest member might have sent the poor thing to an early grave.
“Mrs. Miller, I’m Gwen Williams, with Torchwood. We spoke over the phone.” The wrinkles shifted into a smile, and Mrs. Miller opened the door further, waving her in.
“Come in. Come in. Do sit down. I’ll get us some tea.” Gwen did as she was told. Maybe her first impression of Mrs. Miller hadn’t been fair. Despite the wrinkles, she moved quickly and efficiently.
Gwen could hear cabinets open and close in the kitchen and what sounded like a kettle being set to boil. She looked around the room. There were pictures everywhere. Most were of two ginger-haired children: a girl and a boy who couldn’t have been more than a few years apart, and were obviously closely related. They had the same thin lips and slightly up-turned nose.
Mrs. Miller returned with tea and what Gwen suspected were homemade ginger snaps. There were definite perks to this job.
When their tea was poured, and Gwen had sampled more than a few of the biscuits, they started to talk about the attempted robbery.
“Mrs. Miller, I know that you’ve already told the story to the police, but I was hoping that you could tell it to me as well.” Gwen took one more guilty bite of a biscuit, and waited for a reply.
“Call me Janet, dear. And of course I will.” Janet set her tea down on the table with a click. “Do you see those two children?” She didn’t get up, but Janet motioned towards the pictures that Gwen had been looking at earlier. “Those are my grandchildren: Tanya and William, my two little angels. Now, usually my daughter brings them over to visit me every weekend, but lately she claims she has just been much too busy.” This was obviously a grievous turn of events in Janet’s book, and Gwen made all of the appropriate noises. “She’s never been too busy before, so I don’t see why she would be now.” Janet leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered: “I think that it’s a man.”
“No!” Inwardly Gwen smiled; she wouldn’t have been surprised if Rebecca Johnson was indeed seeing someone, and that was the reason that she suddenly didn’t have time to bring her children over to visit their grandmother.
“But that’s not the only thing.” Janet seemed sufficiently pleased with Gwen’s reaction and leaned back in her seat. She broke off a piece of ginger snap and popped it into her mouth. “Nobody has seen her lately-not her bible circle, not her book club; she hasn’t even been taking the children to church! Abigail, a friend of mine, lives next door to them, and she told me that Rebecca almost never leaves that house anymore!”
That sounded significantly less innocent.
“I think that she might be living with him!” Janet set her biscuit down and took another sip of tea. “Don’t be shy, dear. There are plenty more biscuits where those came from. Have another.”
Gwen put two more on her plate.
Mrs. Janet Miller may have been an even bigger lead than any of them could have hoped for. She owed Andy more than a coffee for this; she would do her best to see that he got that tour of the Hub that he was so keen on.
Part Three