She believes that life is made up of all that you're used to
In the Kashtta Tower's lounge, Suzie Costello is sipping an unholy concoction made mostly of hot cocoa, with some coffee and whiskey added for flavour. It has whipped cream on the top. She's frowning down at a small device, probably alien in origin, which is rattling in a regular repeating pattern, and poking at it
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Pity that's about to change.
J is wandering, keeping to back hallways and odd corners of the building. Like he does. He's trying to use the rhythm of his footsteps to moderate his own emotions, to keep anyone - the people he's trying not to run into, the one person who will feel it regardless - from picking up that his mind's nowhere near the Tower, that it's turning over theories of morphogenic field transmission and the like instead.
He opens a door, not really curious as to what's inside. It's probably an unused custodial hallway. Most of the ones on this floor are unused.
Except that beyond the door, there's a room far, far too large for this part of the building.
What the...?He glances behind him. Same old hallway. And it's not exactly unheard-of for the Tower to ( ... )
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He has to reach for the number, but he doesn't have to do the conversion again. He remembers. Isn't that the bitch of things now? He remembers.
"...seven years younger than I was."
They're gone, now.
He looks back to the filtration system, but there's nothing left to do with it. Nothing left to distract himself with. He stands up, staring through the water again.
"She was a biologist," he says. "Pari was an engineer. They were good."
And now they're gone.
"Anyway."
He exhales, turning back to look at the door and wondering if it'll let him leave now. It's far past time for him to disengage.
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But this is more of J -- or Jack, or whoever he was or is, and however that's relevant -- than he's ever had the chance to see, and he can't help asking.
He forces himself to stillness, to quiet. Perhaps J will just leave. Perhaps J will tell him. He's not certain which is the worse option.
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Oh.
"And that was why..." It's not hard to remember Lisa, to remember swearing to Jack that one day, Jack would be the one who needed saving, and he'd be the one to watch him suffer and die. He'd gone a bit mad, after she died, and he still can't be certain when that was: after Canary Wharf, or after Jack led the rest of Torchwood in shooting her down. Maybe it was neither, but some moment in between, some unnoticed moment when all that was human in Lisa slipped away.
He may not be certain when she could've been pronounced dead, anyway, but he knows that he'd most likely been a bit mad since it started. It only got worse over time, but at the end of it... Jack had done what he couldn't, and Jack put him back together.
Somehow, he doubts there was anyone who could've done as much for Thane.
"I'm--" sorry, he almost says, and catches it at the last minute "--not going to say it. Even if you hadn't said... It doesn't change anything." ( ... )
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"Nothing changes anything." He breathes out. "Time doesn't work like that." His gaze drifts up, losing itself in the ceiling. "No going back."
And as late as he's gone, the people working on time travel all say the same thing: maybe someday, science will figure it out.
His jaw works for a moment. He just needs to shunt off that emotion - no, it's not the sort of thing that's going to make it go away, it's no sort of long-term solution, but he so long as he keeps all this under the threshold of what would trigger a visit from his guardian angel...
Some things are easier with no one watching.
"...anyway."
He hadn't meant to come making excuses for anything. And that was why...
There's reasoning to be untangled there, motive and motivation, but what good would it do?
Nothing changes ( ... )
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Maybe it's time to go on, then. A certain chain of reasoning mends itself, drawing closer to a conclusion that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
A lot can change in a year.
"No harm in trying, I suppose," he says, his voice just on the aching side of the pleasant neutrality he's cultivated over the years. The tells are subtle, but there... The slightest roughness in his voice, the way he can't quite look at J when he says it.
There's a Don't go buried somewhere under that statement, if you know how to look.
Of course, that's stupid of him. Nothing changes anything, J said it himself. And whatever he had with Jack is one more thing they can't go back to. If anything this... that familiar expression, but darker and drier, the way he can't quite keep his voice as neutral as he'd like... this is a sick parody of what things were. Pretty enough if one doesn't look too closely, but nothing about this is right.
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He glances at Ianto from the corner of his eye, but he can't respond to what he knows he's feeling.
"Yeah," he agrees instead. "No harm there."
(Don't go.)
He doesn't have a choice.
He stops looking when he realizes that's not true. I have a choice. There's always a choice. But the other options I can reach are a hell of a lot worse than going. ...every last one of you saw who I am. And the person you want back is the one who would have to make this decision.
Time to go, then.
He steps forward, approaching the door with a wary eye. It seems perfectly mundane and doorlike, not that that particular quality seemed to mean much with the other ones.
With a decisive inhale, he steps forward.
...nothing happens.
He turns, looking back up at the threshold he just crossed - one which notably didn't spit him out anywhere it shouldn't have - and spreads his hands in demonstration. Well. Look at that.He should... really, really go, now ( ... )
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"Thank you for the help," Ianto says, with a little nod and a smile that comes nowhere near his eyes.
He watches J for a moment, unsure what to make of that last... request? His voice is almost too soft to hear when he responds.
"...You, too."
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