Just Another Word (Part 2)
Rating: PG-13 (will eventually be NC-17)
Word count: ~ 2,300 (this part)
Warnings: None save for copious amounts of angst and a slight emotional breakdown.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: Any updates will be extremely erratic over the next few weeks. I apologize. As for the story, a) what Mainframe did is still my secret, but I’ll get there soon, b) this takes the place of the Cyberwoman episode. Same timeline. Lastly, c) I'm operating under the premise that with the main section of Mainframe hidden away in London, the rest just acted like an advanced computer system, so Jack has no knowledge of what she’s really capable of.
Chapter Two
When Ianto comes back to the world to find that it is no longer built solely on binary coding, he has a sinking feeling that he already knows what’s happened. He doesn’t remember it, exactly-Mainframe is at least that kind-but he knows what she was planning, what she felt she had to do. He knows it like it’s part of him, and maybe it is, because he can still feel Mainframe in his head, lurking in the back of his thoughts like a hovering mother hen.
She’s a massive alien supercomputer, so the feeling is more than a little disconcerting.
The first thing outside of his own head to register is the smell of dampness and the first traces of mildew starting. Then it’s the acrid tang of metal and the faintest underlying hint of coppery blood.
His blood runs cold, because he knows those smells-has been dealing with them every day for months now-and he can't hear the constant hum and whirr of machines that should accompany them. There’s no sound, even when there should be many. The hiss of the breathing apparatus is gone.
So is the soft beep of the heart monitor.
Ianto is already in mourning before he even opens his eyes. He remembers Mainframe’s words well, because they were formed using his brain. He remembers that cold, calculating clatter of threat detected and the way it made his heart stutter to an aching stop.
Most of all, he remembers the sick awareness in his heart that he had just wanted someone else to make a decision for once, that he wanted to lose control just for a moment and have Lisa’s fate be out of his hands. It hurts that he could be so selfish, and the hurt is only underscored by the faint, wrenching horror he feels at his own relief.
But there’s resignation in there, too. Mainframe is probably the smartest being on Earth, possibly in several galaxies, and she is certain there was nothing that could be done to save Lisa. Ianto knows firsthand-has experienced for himself during their neural interfaces-just how much reasoning and processing power Mainframe has. If she was that certain the conversion couldn’t be halted or reversed, she was probably right.
That doesn’t mean Ianto’s heart isn’t breaking because of it, though. All the logic in the world won't make him ache any less.
The silence where the heart monitor should be only makes the sound of booted footsteps more apparent. Ianto doesn’t need to open his eyes to know who it is, but he does to anyway, resigned to whatever his fate will be. He looks up to meet burning blue eyes, and then can't make himself look away.
Jack's face is a confused mess of expressions and emotions, with fury, horror, and betrayal leading the way. There's anger in his eyes, but there's a kind of appalled sympathy, too, and it’s too much. Ianto looks away, and chokes on a sob when his gaze lands on Lisa’s deathly still form. The machines have been turned off, the simplest way to kill her, and Ianto wishes he could say that he’d never thought about it, when the pain was especially bad and she cried in choked silence. Pull out one plug, flip a few switches-that was all it would have taken to end her life. And that was exactly what he had done, regardless of whether it had been him in control of his body or Mainframe.
He killed Lisa.
The silence stretches out, a living thing that devours his heart a little more with each second. Then Jack moves-finally, a little voice inside Ianto says. Finally. He’ll kill me and it will all be over-and Ianto closes his eyes, anticipating the bullet, the gun pressed against his skull. Vaguely, he hopes Jack will keep at least a little distance-brain matter is terribly hard to get out of his coat.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, Jack fists a hand in his shirt collar and drags him upright until they're nose to nose.
“What the hell?” he snarls. “Ianto, what the hell is this? What have you done?”
Another sob chokes him, another cry that he can just barely keep in, and Ianto knows he’s shaking, can feel it through all of his limbs like the prelude to a seizure. “I killed her,” he rasps, voice tight and broken with all the grief he can feel but not let out-because if he does, if he gives in, it’s quite possible he’ll simply never stop. “I loved her and I killed her. I-I couldn’t stop the conversion, I couldn’t save her!”
The first sob comes, a choking, gasping sound that is not so much broken as shattered, crushed like glass from One’s countless windows pulverized beneath heavy metal boots. Ianto crumbles, because this is it-this is his grief. He hasn’t mourned at all, hasn’t said his farewells to the friends and family and the home he had at Torchwood London. All of his attention has been on Lisa, as though by saving her, the entire bloody tragedy would become easier to bear.
But it hasn’t, because he didn’t. He failed, and now all that’s left of him is a dark and broken man, a traitor with nothing to his name. Going to Mainframe was supposed to end all of this, set him free of his fear and terror and confusion, and he supposes that in a way it has.
But freedom is just another word for having nothing left to lose.
*.~.*.~.*
There is no wild waving of guns, no threats hissed in his ear as he’s tossed to the Weevils. Instead, Jack drags him past Owen, Gwen, and Tosh's startled gazes and up to his office, where he deposits him roughly on the couch. Ianto just lets himself fall, boneless and exhausted from the force of his grief and the sharpness of his terror. He curls in on himself, shaking, because there's no one he can blame for this except the one other survivor of Canary Wharf who means anything to him. Mainframe isn’t at fault here. He is. It’s his actions that have led to this. If he’d only kept looking for leads elsewhere, if he’d tracked down that cybernetics doctor from Japan instead of pinning all of his hopes on Mainframe, maybe things would be different.
Of course, maybe they wouldn’t, and Ianto should have left Lisa in Torchwood Tower the way she wanted him to.
At length, Jack rises from his desk and stalks over, dropping a piece of paper on Ianto’s lap. There’s tightly bottled fury vibrating in every gesture, every words as he snarls, “Did you send me that?”
Ianto looks at it blankly, barely registering the words at first. It’s a request for Jack to come to Lisa’s room in the basement, sent from Ianto’s email account and in his usual brief wording. He stares silently for a moment, trying to make sense of it. Mainframe did this, obviously-and, remembering her conclusion that there was a 38% chance Ianto would harm himself, she probably did it to be sure he wasn’t alone after he found Lisa. There's little chance Jack will let him out of his sight now, after all.
Jack's also still waiting for an answer, even though Ianto doesn’t have much of one to give. He just blinks at the Captain blankly for a moment, and then nods jerkily. “It sees so, yes.”
Jack frowns a little at that, some flicker of something beside anger coming to the fore. For a moment, it looks like he’s about to start shouting again, the mixed emotions in his face twisting like a tropical storm, but then he sighs deeply and all the fight seems to drain out of him. He slumps back against his desk, staring at Ianto with dark, hurt eyes, and that hurts more than the anger.
“Why?” he asks-and it really is a question, not a demand. “Why do it in the first place, and then why tell me about it?”
Ianto stares down at his hands, twisting them together in his lap. Monster, he thinks to himself as he remembers those same hands working on Lisa, helping her live. They're doubtless the same hands that pulled the plug and killed her, too. Monster.
He wishes he could be angry at Jack, that he could hate him and rail at him and curse him for killing Lisa, but Jack's done nothing. Lisa’s blood is on Ianto’s hands. The guilt is on his shoulders. And even then, it wasn’t completely him who killed her, either.
Life, Ianto thinks wryly, would be far less complicated if he knew who to blame.
But Jack is still waiting for his answer, so Ianto takes a deep breath and starts his story at the very beginning, when a strange man in a lab coat came into the coffee shop where Ianto worked and then had a small fit because Ianto remembered both his face and order from the time he had visited two months previously.
It’s not exactly a happy story, but it’s not entirely a tragedy, either.
*.~.*.~.*
analyzing neural interface…
completed.
conclusion: interface is stable. subject: Ianto Jones shows no signs of mental deterioration.
conclusion: upload successful.
accessing recent observations…
no active threats detected.
one possible threat detected.
analyzing observational data…
subject: Captain Jack Harkness (true designation unknown) has a 43.927% chance of posing a danger to subject: Ianto Jones.
conclusion: primary protocols must be established to prevent danger to Ianto jones.
conclusion: Captain Jack Harkness (true designation unknown) must be convinced of Ianto Jones’s innocence lack of malice as a motivating factor.
love does not make Ianto Jones guilty.
accessing Torchwood personnel psychiatric evaluations…
completed.
applying event prediction logarithms…
completed.
conclusion: Captain Jack Harkness (true designation unknown) will only accept verifiable facts.
conclusion: i must reveal my true self.
*.~.*.~.*
In the end, Ianto is give a four-week suspension, and Jack accompanies him to his flat to make sure he doesn’t have any alien tech there. He doesn’t, even if Jack doesn’t believe him and searches the entire flat to be certain. Ianto simply stays out of his way as he does, even though they're not exactly at each other’s throats right now-Ianto’s too tired to be at anyone’s throat, honestly. This day has been longer than any he’s ever experienced before, and it’s only a little after noon.
Eventually, Jack leaves with a stern warning not to travel out of Cardiff and to keep his phone on him at all times. Ianto stands where Jack left him, staring around the flat that he had decorated for Lisa, filled with Lisa’s belongings and the remnants of her personality, and for a moment he feels like he’s the only person in an entirely empty world.
It’s only a moment, though, because Mainframe is in his head, a logical, comforting hum, and there is nothing to do but sleep.
*.~.*.~.*
Jack walks back into the Hub, weary to the bone and more than ready to drown his sorrows-at least temporarily-in some good whiskey. However, the gods of drinking apparently aren’t smiling on him tonight, because when he walks into the main area every computer is on, and they all display the same message.
hello, Captain Jack Harkness. i am Mainframe.
He stops at that, frowning. The Torchwood firewalls are the best in the world, so there's no possibility of this being an outside attack, but Jack's never heard mention of the computer system being advanced enough to do this. Admittedly, Torchwood London was the one to deal with installing and maintaining the main section at the Tower, but Jack's lived in the same base for almost sixty years. He’d probably have noticed by now if-
The same way you noticed Ianto keeping his half-converted girlfriend in the basement? a vicious voice reminds him. Jack flinches.
There's a soft hum from the monitors, and the words disappear liked someone pressing the delete key. More take their place, slow and deliberate.
with the destruction of Torchwood one, this unit has become the primary command center. Ianto Jones has overseen maintenance for five years.
Jack takes a deep breath, thinks longingly of a stiff drink, and then settles in Tosh's chair in front of the computer. “All right, then, Mainframe,” he says, picking up on what the computer isn’t saying. “Tell me everything you know about Mr. Jones.”
He’s heard this story from Ianto once already, but it never hurts to double-check. Especially when there might be a need to Retcon Ianto in the future if he doesn’t prove trustworthy. Jack wants to avoid that, he really does-he knows just what stupid things love can drive a man to do-but the safety of Earth comes first.
No matter how broken and beautiful the Welshman is, Jack is the Captain for a reason. He has to make all of the hard decisions, the ones that no one else is willing to make.
Except for now, the voice reminds him. You didn’t have to kill Lisa Hallett. Ianto already did that.
Jack doesn’t know if that makes him feel better or worse.
Part Three