Torchwood FF: Act as if you have faith (Owen/Ianto, PG-13, post 1.13)
Title: Act as if you have faith
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Owen/Ianto, team gen-ness, implications of Jack/Owen, Jack/Ianto, and canon pairings
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for language and implication
Genre: Drama
Length: 3,700 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to RTD
Spoilers: Set post 1.13 and potential spoilers from all aired episodes.
Summary: Weeks turn to months and hope is hard to keep. But pretence is enough if someone else believes it.
"Act as if you have faith, and faith will be given to you"
- - - -
Gwen is the one who tells the police. She asks, despairingly, what it could hurt. As if Jack is going to be found because of a police missing poster. They aren’t the kind of people who get found at all. Not in the normal ways, certainly not still alive. But she calls their contact and makes a report, voice stiff and urgent. Owen wonders what Swanson hears in Gwen’s voice, with Jack only missing, that she had not heard in Jack’s, with Gwen dying on a Cardiff pier. But she does, and there is no laughter when Gwen explains that they have lost their leader. He’s gone, fucking gone like everything else that falls through the cracks in this city. A price for the undoing of their misdeeds - Jack had been flotsam and jetsam too, stolen away when the rift took back the rest.
For weeks, stretching all the way into early March, a full month since Jack’s disappearance, they do nothing but look. Tosh analyses the sound endlessly, until its running loop starts to drive the pterodactyl nuts. Now she is bent over her computer with her headphones in, the remnants of the Torchwood One archive pulled up on the big screen.
Owen still isn’t sure that Gwen has left the Hub since it happened. She must have - she has new clothes, and she knows Rhys packed a suitcase and left the apartment. But she is there when he arrives and still there when he leaves. And that is earlier and later these days.
Ianto seems to be the only one still doing his job. The Hub, always tidy, is now practically sterile. The papers on Jack’s desk have been straightened and restraightened, he has done inventory each Monday like clockwork, and has now started on the vaults.
“Ianto?” Owen asked.
“Owen?” Ianto sounded surprised to see him.
“Going to tell me I’m in the way?”
“No. I just haven’t seen you down here in a while.”
“I’ve been around.”
“Yes. You’ve been sitting at your desk watching the non-existent CCTV footage.”
“I’m getting somewhere.”
“I don’t think you are. This is the most you’ve spoken in five weeks.”
“Thought I never shut up. Your words.”
Ianto shrugged. Owen has never been able to read Ianto well, but he recognised his own listlessness on his colleague’s face.
“Why did you come down here?” Ianto asked.
“Curiosity got the better of me.”
“Excuse me?”
“I wanted to see what you were doing,” Owen translated.
“Filing.”
Owen nodded. Ianto is filing, so there must be something about the universe still in line. Perhaps that’s why he came down here.
A box was swung into his chest lightly. “Take the other end of this.”
“Oi! Watch the merchandise.”
He took the box anyway, and they lugged it up the stairs between the two of them. The box is marked, in a script that isn’t Ianto’s, “possible teleportation devices”. If Owen notices this, he doesn’t comment.
One of Tosh’s many alarms goes off. It isn’t the alarm, the one they will know when they hear it, but one of those they’ve been mostly ignoring for a month. Unless the police have phoned them personally, everything has been left to the cops and the military. UNIT, probably, if it was that serious.
Ianto came away from the armoury with a gun and one of their stunners. He holstered the gun under their curious looks, and pulled the SUV’s keys from his pocket.
“Ianto?” Tosh asked, her voice going high with concern.
He looked at her, all polite innocence. “Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Our job.”
“Ianto... until we can find out what happened... do you not think...?”
“Ja.. The Captain would want us to do our jobs.”
“He isn’t dead, Ianto,” Gwen snapped.
“I know,” he answered, and didn’t stop walking towards the door.
“Ianto, wait,” Owen called. “I could do with shooting something.”
“Owen!” Tosh called indignantly, “What about Jack? We don’t know what we’re doing as it is without you both-”
“What do you think he’ll do to us if he comes back and finds a smoking hole where Cardiff used to be?”
Tosh looked at Gwen and smiled, just a little. Gwen got up from the table and pulled her hair back into a rough ponytail. “We’re not giving up on him,” she warned.
Their formation breaks as they burst into the warehouse, no one sure who’s supposed to be leading. But this is one Weevil, and there is muscle memory and something else besides. It goes towards Ianto and Gwen comes at it from the side, ducking under a flailing arm and it is down and out.
Still, Owen looked over from the driving to see Ianto still thinking about what Gwen said before. He sees the “Never” that Ianto doesn’t say; his agreement is equally silent.
They sit on the stairs up to the conference room. No one mentions that they don’t eat in the room anymore. They just sort of stop before they get to the door, and Ianto picks up the cartons from the steps instead of the table. It is like when Suzie died, and they ordered her favourites for weeks. But Gwen was there then, sweet and determined to learn, and so very alive. Not filling the hole exactly, but papering over it. Now there are four where there should be five, and Jack’s living absence is more gaping than Suzie’s death.
Gwen was talking, half to them and half to herself. “What if he doesn’t want us to find him?”
“What?”
“Well he was never... he was never happy was he? He was always waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Tosh asked, craning her neck to look at Gwen, who was sitting a step below her.
“Who, I always thought. He said... just before, actually, he said.”
Owen glared at her. “Said what?”
“He said that the only thing that would have tempted him to open the rift was the right kind of doctor. He thought... he thought this doctor could explain why he can’t die. But I always assumed he was talking about someone specific, you know? More about the person than the profession. Otherwise you would have done, Owen,” she teased.
Owen was looking at Ianto. Always pale, Owen could still see the blood drain from his face. The younger man took off down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He tripped at the bottom and Owen just about managed to catch his arm. “Ianto.”
Ianto pulled away and ran to Tosh’s desk, breathing heavily as he typed.
At first he can’t find what he wants, but if anyone can navigate the broken fragments of the Torchwood Archive it is Ianto.
“There,” he pointed, bringing it up onscreen.
Miscellaneous Alien Doctor. Irregular, disruptive non-human entity. The picture is of a skinny guy with a wide smile, and in the background is a blue old-fashioned phone box. Yvonne Hartman stands to one side with a smug expression, looking like the cat that got the cream.
“This was the day of the Battle of Canary Wharf,” Ianto whispered. “He appeared in the middle of Torchwood One. A time-traveller and an alien. He calls himself the Doctor. Look.”
He highlighted a section of the report.
“Ianto.”
“The noise, Tosh’s recording, did it sound like a ‘mechanical screeching alarm’?”
Tosh had been looking curiously at another picture - apparently the guy’s a shape-changer or something - one with an older man with close-cropped hair and big ears. She froze at Ianto’s words. “That’s what it says?”
“Yes.”
“We still don’t know this is-“ Owen tried, because they have been following false leads since this happened; because there are no leads here, not really. He disappeared from a locked building in the time it took Gwen to get out of Jack’s office and down the stairs. There are no normal ways of sorting this out; this is too easy.
“1941. He was in London in 1941.”
“Jack was in Cardiff in 1941, remember?”
“One of him was,” Ianto was near shouting, frustrated by their incomprehension, “the other was in London, stealing Captain Harkness’ identity! They were there.”
“Okay then,” Gwen said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Okay,” Tosh agreed, coming to stand at his other side. “Now we have somewhere to start.”
Owen sighed. “Fine.”
Ianto looked at him, annoyed by his disbelief or surprised by his acquiescence. “You believe me?”
He nodded, not quite belief but close enough for this. Owen has no history with intuition. He is good at medicine - if not people - and he is good at instinctive reaction. This stuff is Gwen’s sphere, and if Ianto wants to join her in fool’s hope then why not? There’s nothing else to go on, and they’ve tried all the conventional routes. They’ve seen fairies and sex-aliens and dinosaurs and ghosts. Finding Jack by chance - Gwen’s remembered conversation, Tosh’s recording, Ianto’s presence that day in London - it seems as good a method as any. He thinks, ‘Hope will be the death of us,’ and follows anyway.
There is a gun to Gwen’s head and Owen is too far away and at completely the wrong angle to try anything. Tosh is a few paces to the left of him, no help. They could hit him, but only by going through Gwen’s skull.
“Get away from her!”
“Put the gun down,” Ianto instructs, his own pistol raised and pointed. Ianto is at least close to the man, but in front, still with Gwen in the way of any rescue attempt.
“No.” The guy is unhinged, his finger twitching on the trigger, and whatever Gwen is whispering in his ear isn’t working.
For some reason, Ianto smiles. “Okay then.” He fires.
Gwen screams, blood spattered across her face, but she isn’t the rookie anymore and stops fast. “I’m okay,” she reassures them. Owen is already beside her, tilting her face to check that none of the blood is hers.
The other guy is dead, Owen knows without looking. That’s the thing about having a bullet go straight through an eye and out the other side - easy to call it.
“We could have saved him,” Gwen says, guilty already for the blood she’s covered in, “Why am I more...”
“We look after our own first, Gwen,” Ianto says.
“I thought Torchwood’s motto was ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours,’” she points out.
“Torchwood’s is,” Ianto agrees calmly. “Back to the Hub?”
At the pub later, just the two of them, Gwen gone home to wash up, and Tosh driving her, Owen offers to buy Ianto a drink. “Because I guess maybe you were aiming for my shoulder after all.”
“I did say.”
“Yeah. Anyway... good job.” He doesn’t say thanks - the sentiment would be condescending, not like Ianto did it for Owen, or wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. And Gwen isn’t his to thank anyone for.
Ianto answers, “Thank you.”
“So, what are you drinking?”
“Scotch.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You expected me to be a cheaper date?”
“After that you can order bloody champagne if you want it, but you don’t drink scotch. Jack drinks...” He turns to the bartender. “Neat Scotch, and a pint, thanks, mate.”
“It isn’t...” Ianto sounds unsure for the first time this evening.
“We’ve all got our own ways of going mad. Who’m I to judge? Cheers.”
The glasses clink together. “Cheers,” Ianto echoes quietly.
Owen wondered what their record was like without Jack. If there were more or less fatalities, more or less captures. Ianto would know, but Owen doesn’t ask. There isn’t an answer he could give that would make either of them happy.
This isn’t something to make either of them happy either.
Owen held Ianto against the wall, tight enough to bruise but not tight enough. Jack is taller, broader, more there than either of them, and when Ianto moans into Owen’s neck he knows that it is a ghost of a stronger feeling.
He pulled back, keeping Ianto’s shoulders braced against the wall of their missing Captain’s office. “Don’t fucking pretend,” Owen hissed.
Ianto looked surprised, as well he might. What was this but pretence, surrounded by Jack’s scent and his belongings, both pairs of eyes closed tight.
“Why aren’t you with Gwen right now?” Ianto asked, as if it had just occurred to him.
“Because saintly Gwen finds it a lot harder to cheat on a guy that’s left her weeks ago.”
“I think there were more polite ways to call me your second choice. Or should I just be grateful that I outrank Tosh?”
Owen laughed, the one he knew Ianto hated. “And what am I?”
Ianto didn’t say anything, but twisted his shoulder out of Owen’s grip. Lips red and wet, marks down his neck, and hair finger-mussed; still wrapped in wounded dignity. That or guilt.
“Yeah,” Owen said, quiet now but still sharp, “just so we’re both clear.”
More weeks pass. It is April now, and Cardiff is drenched.
Ianto whispers, “Contraceptives in the rain,” and Owen laughs and means it.
“What if he wanted to go?” Ianto asked, back in the Hub. The question they have not asked again, another one they’re not sure they want to have answered.
Owen doesn’t know. Jack mocked humanity like he wasn’t part of it, though Owen knew as well as anyone that this wasn’t true. Jack has been everywhere and everywhen, done everything (everyone), and who knows why he settled on Cardiff in the twenty-first century? If he had chosen to settle there at all.
“Add that to the list,” Owen said.
“What?”
“The list of questions for him to answer when he turns up.”
He will turn up. People don’t just disappear like that. (Except when they do, taking off in an airplane into the wide blue fucking yonder). They’re still without a leader, without even a clear second-in-command, the archives don’t know everything Jack knew, and they give even less hints of what to do when you’ve finally managed to find out the problem. Jack has to come back because without him Torchwood doesn’t work.
Owen patted Ianto’s arm carelessly, heedless of the other two messing around at Tosh’s computer.
Ianto stopped him before he could leave. “Owen.”
“Yeah?”
“Never mind.”
“You alright?”
“I’m fine.”
He waited, on the off chance Ianto decided to say something else. He obviously wasn’t all right, but that didn’t mean he was going to tell Owen. “Okay then. Yell if you decide to fill me in.”
He thought Ianto might have said something else as he walked out, but Owen is not sure enough of it to look around.
Three month anniversary, he realises belatedly. Wonders if the statistics about exponential decrease of likelihood of finding missing persons apply to alien abductions.
Ianto comes to him, the first time. Shoves Owen back onto the chair as he gets up, quick hands working their way under his shirt.
Owen feels himself at a disadvantage - he is still working on Ianto’s tie when he finds himself practically naked. Ianto has the better angle too, he has all the control from his position and it is Owen who stifles his cry against Ianto’s neck.
Ianto lets Owen’s fingers stray along his narrow jaw and allows his head to be turned for a kiss. Not a pretence today, not a replacement either. Today he is aware enough to admit that it is not only Ianto looking for Jack’s strong shoulders. They are neither of them enough to replace him, but they can both be comfort in a storm.
Owen writes promises on Ianto’s skin that he is not sure either of them believe. But Ianto follows the movements, a half-second behind, on Owen’s hips and drifting down. Between the two of them they have something close enough to faith.
He wakes up to find Ianto’s soft hand still resting on his ribcage. He isn’t draped over Owen - they are nothing so passionate or so comfortable - but curled into his side. Just that one hand, fingers spread over Owen’s bones, marking a place.
Owen hasn’t moved, but Ianto wakes up and smiles. “I’ll go and put on a pot of coffee, shall I?”
“Sure.”
“You remember where the showers are, I take it?” Ianto grins, a tease about the, well, legions of times Owen has got himself drenched with foreign substances. Aliens, indigenous weevils, pterodactyls... none of them seem inclined to like him very much.
Owen tosses a cushion vaguely in Ianto’s direction. “I think I can find them.”
“Good. Coffee’ll be done when you’re out.”
“Ready for another day saving the earth?”
“Or at least the welsh-speaking part of it.”
“I don’t speak Welsh.”
Ianto calls back over his shoulder in the lilt that Owen recognises but can’t translate. It could be ‘I know’, or it could be ‘and you’ll be first to go when my revolution comes.’ Ianto has a wicked sense of humour when he doesn’t think he can be overheard. But it makes Owen grin and then laugh, a response to the tone and not the words.
“Prat,” he shouts down the corridor, and hears Ianto laugh to himself in echo.
Gwen was right.
Gwen was right and it is a sign of how utterly bollocksed up this is that he can’t get that banal thought out of his head.
“Dr Owen Harper, Torchwood. The hospital reported a John Doe that matched our missing person’s description.”
“Yes, doctor,” the nurse replied, leading him quickly to a dimly-lit private room. Ianto trailed behind, Gwen and Tosh following in her car. They had been out in the SUV, following a lead, and they were closest to the hospital. So it would be them who found out soonest, who would have their hopes realised or crushed first.
Ianto recognised him at once, the shape of him lying still on the white bed. Owen picked up the small sound of joy from among the noise of the machines, barely audible.
Owen stepped closer, just to make sure. He picked up the chart, bracing a hand firmly on the end of the bed, not able to look anymore.
Possible concussion, minor contusions on the hands and arms. Not malnourished, normal organ function.
“Where was he found?”
“He turned up practically on our doorstep. We guessed someone had brought him here and drove off. It happens.”
“What was he wearing?”
She looked unfazed by the odd question. “Army clothes it looked like. That was a strange one, I’ll give you that. And we couldn’t work out how to get that funny watch off him.”
Ianto, sitting at the chair by Jack’s head, rolled up the sleeve to see the scanner on his arm. Jack’s fingers twitched, and Ianto dropped his hand. “Sir?” he asked quietly.
“Ianto?”
Owen closed his eyes in quick relief. “Oh, thank God.”
“And Owen,” Jack murmured, eyes flickering beneath his eyelids.
The nurse left discretely and the sudden silence was too much.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Owen!” Ianto protested.
Jack didn’t seem to mind. “How long have I been gone?”
“Over three months, you selfish bastard. Ianto...I... I should go and call Tosh and Gwen, yeah?”
“Owen...” Jack said, trying to call him back.
“They’ve been going out of their minds, they should know you’re okay.”
He closed the door with shaking hands, and leant against the offensively yellow wall. Gwen’s ‘thank God’ was as heartfelt as his own, and he could hear Tosh crying in the background. He hoped the tears didn’t blur her vision. It would be just their luck for one team-member to turn up and another to crash two of them into a wall.
Selfish bastard was right. Disappeared for three months and had the cheek to turn up with barely a scratch. No amnesia to explain why he hadn’t come back, hadn’t responded to any of their frenzied searches. Owen closed his eyes to make the spots go away, clenching his fists to stop the tremors. Ignoring the other line of thought, the litany of thanks that he was back, that he was okay, that they could be okay now too.
He looked through the glass in the door. Ianto had one hand gripping Jack’s, so tight that both of them had white knuckles. Or maybe Jack was just holding on as tightly.
Ianto turned towards the window, preternatural ability to sense he was in someone’s thoughts. Owen couldn’t hear him, but he could see his own name formed by Ianto’s lips. Need won out over anger, and he walked back into the room.
Jack looked at them both curiously. “Something you want to tell the class, Dr Harper?”
“Sorry, you’re the only one that’s going to be answering questions for a while.”
Ianto quirked a smile at Owen, his other hand rustling in his jacket pocket. “We have a list.”
“You have a...” Jack sighed. “Of course you have a list.”
“And you wrote it down,” Owen muttered. “Cause God forbid you miss an opportunity to practice anal retention.”
“Owen wrote the first ten,” Ianto said, giving him up without a thought.
Jack took the page from him, expression softening. Owen knew which the first on the list was. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer any more. Jack had come back, willingly or not, and the other question didn’t matter today.
Gwen and Tosh burst through the door before Jack could answer, and for a while there was nothing but more crying and hugging.
They ended up with Ianto and Owen on one side, Gwen and Tosh on the other. The girls sandwiched Jack’s right hand between their own; Ianto still gripping his left. The fingers of Ianto’s own left hand brushed lightly against Owen’s leg until he gave in. Owen leant forward, close to the bed, and inched his fingers over the blanket until they rested on Jack’s ankle. He imagined, stupid in a doctor, that he could feel the thud of Jack’s pulse under his fingertips. The warmth, though, wasn’t imagined, nor the quicksilver smile Jack gave him.
Jack widened his smile to encompass them all. “Well then. Starting at the end of Ianto’s list and working up. During the London Blitz I met someone...”
FIN.
ETA: Link to Ianto/Owen/Jack sequels
Thoughts would be lovely, as this is my first Torchwood fic, and I have no idea why I thought Owen/Ianto would be a nice easy way to start!