Fic: Preparing - Sequel to ‘Different’
Title: Preparing - Sequel to ‘ Different’
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Lisa, Jack, Team
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Set after Fragments but before Cyberwoman.
Summary: It’s surprisingly easy for Ianto to keep Lisa’s presence secret from his new colleagues.
Word Count: 795
Written For: My own prompt ‘Torchwood, Ianto, Keeping Lisa's existence a secret was easier than he expected,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Getting into the Hub in the first place had been a tricky business. Even the advantages Ianto’s extraordinary memory gave him couldn’t help much with persuading Captain Harkness to give him a job, not when it would be more than his life was worth to let Torchwood Three’s leader find out about his unusual abilities. He couldn’t risk the possibility that Harkness might simply lock him up, treat him like something less than human the way Ms Hartman had, a valuable organic computer rather than a living, breathing, feeling person.
Once he was inside, however, thanks to a stroke of luck and a handy stray Pteranodon, getting Lisa safely stowed in an unused room on one of the lower levels, and keeping her existence a secret from his new colleagues, proved much easier than he’d anticipated.
Having finally been persuaded to hire Ianto as a general dogsbody, Captain Harkness had then proceeded to give him full access to the entire Hub; Ianto hadn’t even needed to sneak a peek at his new boss’s access codes, they’d simply been handed to him. Unlike at Torchwood One, there weren’t really any restricted areas; all personnel could go wherever they wanted. Nothing was off-limits, with the possible exception of the secure archives in the Captain’s office, but Ianto had wasted no time in checking the list of items stored there, determining at a glance that none of them would help Lisa in any way, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t sneak into them without Harkness finding out.
A single afternoon was all he’d needed to map out the tunnels of the lower levels in his head, and to find and prepare a suitable room for the woman he loved. The bare stone walls and cold concrete floor were a bleak setting for a jewel such as Lisa, but Ianto told himself it was only going to be temporary, just until he’d gathered all the information on cybernetics available and secured the services of an expert in the field. Even with the advantages his eidetic memory gave him, he didn’t trust his hands to carry out the delicate surgical work that would be required in order to remove her implants. That was something he wasn’t trained for, and Lisa’s life was far too precious to take unnecessary risks with.
When everything was as ready as he could make it, he’d still been forced to wait a few more days until the rest of the team was out on a retrieval before bringing Lisa and her adapted conversion unit into the Hub. The move had gone smoothly though, and once he’d got her settled into her new accommodations as comfortably as was possible, considering her half-converted state, all the rest turned out to be relatively easy.
With his superior knowledge of the Hub’s layout, Ianto could get to and from almost any part of the underground base without being seen, even by the security cameras, making it possible for him to appear to leave work every night while actually remaining with Lisa. He didn’t like leaving her alone for too long, not when she was sedated and unable to defend herself.
When he wasn’t caring for Lisa, Ianto kept himself busy by sorting out Torchwood Three’s archives, going through each filing cabinet in turn and reorganising its contents, reading every file at a glance, thereby learning everything there was to know about the Cardiff branch and its operatives, past and present. Piecing together information, always on the lookout for anything that might possibly help Lisa, he soon found himself learning things about Jack Harkness that he never would have expected, including the fact that he was extraordinarily long-lived. Possibly, he might even be immortal, though Ianto couldn’t be completely certain of that just yet, not without concrete proof, which he’d so far failed to find. Not that it was important for him to know; he was merely curious. It seemed he might not be the only Torchwood employee who differed from the human norm.
Acquiring the drugs Lisa needed was simplicity itself, since Jack had put Ianto in charge of the day-to-day running of the Hub. That task included making sure everyone had whatever they needed to do their jobs, be it canisters of acetylene gas for Suzie’s welding, paper for the photocopier, or medical supplies for Owen. All Ianto had to do was add whatever he needed to the requisition forms after they’d been read through and authorized by Jack.
‘This is going to work!’ he told himself. He’d even located and contacted a cybernetics expert. After only a few short months, success was already within his grasp. Soon Lisa would be herself again, and they could leave Torchwood behind them, forever. What could possibly go wrong now?
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Lisa, Jack, Team
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Set after Fragments but before Cyberwoman.
Summary: It’s surprisingly easy for Ianto to keep Lisa’s presence secret from his new colleagues.
Word Count: 795
Written For: My own prompt ‘Torchwood, Ianto, Keeping Lisa's existence a secret was easier than he expected,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Getting into the Hub in the first place had been a tricky business. Even the advantages Ianto’s extraordinary memory gave him couldn’t help much with persuading Captain Harkness to give him a job, not when it would be more than his life was worth to let Torchwood Three’s leader find out about his unusual abilities. He couldn’t risk the possibility that Harkness might simply lock him up, treat him like something less than human the way Ms Hartman had, a valuable organic computer rather than a living, breathing, feeling person.
Once he was inside, however, thanks to a stroke of luck and a handy stray Pteranodon, getting Lisa safely stowed in an unused room on one of the lower levels, and keeping her existence a secret from his new colleagues, proved much easier than he’d anticipated.
Having finally been persuaded to hire Ianto as a general dogsbody, Captain Harkness had then proceeded to give him full access to the entire Hub; Ianto hadn’t even needed to sneak a peek at his new boss’s access codes, they’d simply been handed to him. Unlike at Torchwood One, there weren’t really any restricted areas; all personnel could go wherever they wanted. Nothing was off-limits, with the possible exception of the secure archives in the Captain’s office, but Ianto had wasted no time in checking the list of items stored there, determining at a glance that none of them would help Lisa in any way, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t sneak into them without Harkness finding out.
A single afternoon was all he’d needed to map out the tunnels of the lower levels in his head, and to find and prepare a suitable room for the woman he loved. The bare stone walls and cold concrete floor were a bleak setting for a jewel such as Lisa, but Ianto told himself it was only going to be temporary, just until he’d gathered all the information on cybernetics available and secured the services of an expert in the field. Even with the advantages his eidetic memory gave him, he didn’t trust his hands to carry out the delicate surgical work that would be required in order to remove her implants. That was something he wasn’t trained for, and Lisa’s life was far too precious to take unnecessary risks with.
When everything was as ready as he could make it, he’d still been forced to wait a few more days until the rest of the team was out on a retrieval before bringing Lisa and her adapted conversion unit into the Hub. The move had gone smoothly though, and once he’d got her settled into her new accommodations as comfortably as was possible, considering her half-converted state, all the rest turned out to be relatively easy.
With his superior knowledge of the Hub’s layout, Ianto could get to and from almost any part of the underground base without being seen, even by the security cameras, making it possible for him to appear to leave work every night while actually remaining with Lisa. He didn’t like leaving her alone for too long, not when she was sedated and unable to defend herself.
When he wasn’t caring for Lisa, Ianto kept himself busy by sorting out Torchwood Three’s archives, going through each filing cabinet in turn and reorganising its contents, reading every file at a glance, thereby learning everything there was to know about the Cardiff branch and its operatives, past and present. Piecing together information, always on the lookout for anything that might possibly help Lisa, he soon found himself learning things about Jack Harkness that he never would have expected, including the fact that he was extraordinarily long-lived. Possibly, he might even be immortal, though Ianto couldn’t be completely certain of that just yet, not without concrete proof, which he’d so far failed to find. Not that it was important for him to know; he was merely curious. It seemed he might not be the only Torchwood employee who differed from the human norm.
Acquiring the drugs Lisa needed was simplicity itself, since Jack had put Ianto in charge of the day-to-day running of the Hub. That task included making sure everyone had whatever they needed to do their jobs, be it canisters of acetylene gas for Suzie’s welding, paper for the photocopier, or medical supplies for Owen. All Ianto had to do was add whatever he needed to the requisition forms after they’d been read through and authorized by Jack.
‘This is going to work!’ he told himself. He’d even located and contacted a cybernetics expert. After only a few short months, success was already within his grasp. Soon Lisa would be herself again, and they could leave Torchwood behind them, forever. What could possibly go wrong now?
The End