You Go Ahead, I'll Stay Here [Torchwood]
Characters: Team, Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers to the end of S2
Betas: blackbird_song and thaddeusfavour
When Rhys appears, they’re still stood around Tosh, Gwen picking at her sleeve as if it could bring her back. He stands, watching them, at the top of the stairs; pale with horror as he takes in the blood, and Tosh, and the lack of Owen. He looks like he wants to throw up, or run away, or perhaps both.
Ianto wants to say, Yes, it’s fucking dangerous, alright? This is our job, this is Gwen’s job and it’s why she wanted to keep you out of it.
But he doesn’t.
“Gwen…” he says, gently. They can’t leave Tosh here. She didn’t like this room -preferred her science clear and sharp like technology, not messy and slapdash like Owen’s. She wouldn’t like to be left here. “You have to let go.”
Jack’s still holding on, but Ianto likes to think about problems one at a time.
“No,” Gwen says. “We can’t leave her. What if she gets lonely?”
It’s this absurd logic that propels Rhys to move, edging towards the bo- Tosh - until he can peel away her fingers. “Gwen, love,” he says, wiping blood off her wedding ring as if she wasn’t covered with it anyway. She looks at him, tears on her face as Rhys murmurs something and pulls her into his arms. She lets go then; discards the bravado that led to order in the midst of chaos. She has Rhys to be her strength; Ianto doesn’t have to worry about her right now.
Next, he kneels beside Jack, who doesn’t appear to register Ianto’s presence. He’s staring at Tosh in his arms, the rest of the world unimportant. Two thousand years of purgatory, to come back to this. And Ianto has never really felt able to cope with what Jack carried before.
“She needs to be moved,” he says to break off his thoughts, unsure of whether the words are going to penetrate. “Jack,” he persists. He remembers, suddenly, that Hart is standing somewhere behind him. Who not only knows far more about Jack’s past than Ianto ever will, but who is also psychotic. Ianto decides that he doesn’t care.
He places a hand on Jack’s back, startling him enough to glance at Ianto. “She needs to be moved,” he repeats. He can’t think of a good reason, why, at the minute, but he knows it’s important. There’s an empty syringe lying on the floor as well - that’ll need moving, before Owen…
His eyes burn, but there’s no caustic jab. He thinks, Going to sit in a heap and cry, teaboy? It’s not the same.
“Morgue,” he says, now he’s got Jack’s attention.
“I haven’t spoken to her in a long, long time,” Jack tells Ianto. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Tosh… went. Ianto can’t bring himself to acknowledge that died has a place in this.
Ianto nods. Jack stands, lifting Tosh easily and cradling her against him. She looks as tiny in death as she did alive - she’d never expand to fill a room with her sheer personality like Jack or Gwen, and Ianto liked her all the better for it. Likes her. Liked her. Loved her for her quiet reserve and gentle thanks, and her evil twisted mind. Loved her because she tried to make everyone else’s life that bit smoother at the expense of her own. Loved her because she’d never leave a cup half full overnight to grow a skin and expect him to just deal with it.
He follows Jack, leaving Gwen clinging to her husband. He can’t even bring himself to care where John is.
And Jack’s trying to make sure that Tosh looks comfortable, and he’s crying. Ianto’s eyes are burning, but he’s not sure if he has more tears in him. The past few years seem to have wrung him out, and all he can do for the moment is stare stupidly at Jack, unsure of what to do.
Jack’s brushing a finger down Tosh’s cheek. Then he looks up at Ianto. “I’m…”
Ianto shakes his head, not because he doesn’t understand but because he needs time to process this. Names in a list lead to a feeling of nothingness, and Owen and Tosh deserve better. After Canary Wharf, he’d accepted Mark’s death first. Mark had worked in the office next to his, supported Watford and thought rugby was stupid. Once Mark had been processed, Amy had followed, then Beth, then Andy, then Gethan, who’d grown up three streets over from Ianto but hadn’t met him until he’d swapped a fiver for change on the third floor. But thinking of Gethan doesn’t call up sorrow, just the vague feeling of someone he once knew but doesn’t bother to keep in contact with anymore.
He doesn’t want Owen to be a name that evokes blank nothingness. Owen had never been a blank nothingness to Ianto before, in life or death, and he wasn’t going to bloody well start now.
Jack moves away from Tosh, finally letting go physically. He starts to walk away, but stops level with Ianto, resting a hand on his neck and pressing their foreheads together for a moment. He feels cool, and sticky, and he still smells of earth; it’s sweet, and cloying, and Ianto will never be able to be near a newly dug garden again, but he doesn’t pull away. Because it’s Jack, and he needs Ianto. It’s the one thing that Ianto knows of this new Jack, this ancient Jack, and he’ll cling to it.
“They left me, Toshiko and Owen,” he says, and there’s a resignation there. No surprise. “Got taken away.”
There’s no answer to that, so Ianto just lets Jack pull away and leave. He thinks Jack will end up at the nuclear power plant; he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know much at all tonight, just a bone aching weariness and a dull throbbing where there should be pain, and anger.
So he goes up to the Hub, and shoos Gwen and Rhys away. Before she goes, Gwen clings to him for a second, as if she can physically hold Ianto with her after so many have left. Ianto abandons reserve and clings back before letting go and watching them leave. Fetching a mop and bucket, he stares at the trail of red. He doesn’t want to get rid of it, he realises, not like after Lisa. Lisa had left stains that were testament to the monster he’d let her linger as; Tosh has left evidence of who she is; tenacity, bravery, intelligence, selflessness.
Who she was.
He cleans up the mess anyway, because the movement of the mop is a mindless one, and if he focuses on one square foot at a time, then it’s just one bit of mess followed by another. If he concentrates on getting rid of every last bit of evidence, then he doesn’t have to think about what it means. Doesn’t have to think at all. It’s just something that needs to be done. It’s his job.
He pauses in his action for a second, carefully picking up the syringe where it lies, separating the needle and disposing of it all appropriately. He makes a mental note to tell Owen off for throwing surgical waste in with pizza remains, then just as carefully forgets it.
Then he goes back to mopping. Piece by piece, the floor takes on its normal sheen. Perhaps if he is thorough enough, he can mop away the day.
A pair of hands grips his elbows; he twists and faces his attacker to find that it’s Jack, returned.
“It’s clean, Ianto.”
He realises that he’s been mopping the same patch of floor for an aeon.
“Sorry.”
Jack shakes his head, rebuffing the apology before it’s left Ianto’s lips. They’re both doing their best not to look around, to see Owen’s domain around them, Tosh’s desk above them.
“Do you want me to go?” Ianto asks. Sometimes, it’s easier for Jack that way. He doesn’t like to share all his demons, and Ianto doesn’t push. But he really, really doesn’t want to be alone tonight. It wasn’t Canary Wharf, but it was Cardiff. Caerdydd. Home much more than London could ever be. That was England, and it was okay for that to get blown up by vengeful madmen from any century. Then Ianto could watch it on the news, hear it from Huw Edwards, think isn’t it a pity and go to bed. Cardiff could have monsters. It was the monstrous people he had trouble with.
“No.” It’s a plea, and a demand, and a request, and Jack looks broken, and Ianto wants to fucking well kill Gray, brother or no brother. He’s tried to destroy Ianto’s lover, and Ianto’s city, and those are two things that he’s sworn to protect.
The mop is tugged from Ianto’s hands, and he gets led through Jack’s office to his room.
There’s blood on Ianto’s hands - there had been blood everywhere. He goes to wash it off and finds himself scrubbing at his hands futilely, like Lady fucking Macbeth. Survivor’s guilt, they’d told him after Canary Wharf. Ianto’s curse is his ability to survive. To lose everything and everyone. And the memories of the people he loses are intrinsically tangled with Cybermen and Daleks and sociopaths. Can’t think of Lisa. Can’t think of Owen.
Once again, Jack pulls him out of his thoughts, pressing a kiss to his temple and wrapping his arms around Ianto. But Jack smells of death; of Tosh’s, of his own, of fear and pain; bitter, acrid and Ianto momentarily wants to push him away; run far, far away from him. He doesn’t want that smell to surround him like Jack is now.
And Jack’s taking off his clothes; not a careful seduction, nor a hurried frenzy to get him into bed. Just removing his clothes. And he’s laying them out neatly as he puts them down, and that’s for Ianto because Jack folds clothes efficiently, letting them take up as little room as possible - the years he spent in the military, he’s said. He herds Ianto around, and it’s not until the water hits him that he realises that he’s in the shower, and that the water can wash away the smell, if not the look on Tosh’s face as she lay in Jack’s arms and died.
Died.
Jack shucks his own clothes and joins him, scrubbing at his own skin until the physical presence of the ground is gone. And Ianto pulls him under the water flow, and clings onto soapy-slippery skin, and if he cries then the tears are lost in the shower. Because Jack’s there, and solid, and clinging back, and he’s the one person that Ianto can’t survive.
And Ianto whispers, “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere,” and Jack buries his face in his neck and shakes helplessly, because it’s the most honest that Ianto has been with him, and it’s an outright lie. Ianto will lose all except Jack and Torchwood, has already, but Jack loses everything, every single time.
But they’ll say the lies, because they wish they were true.