The Only Sound
Title: The Only Sound
Author: crystalshard
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Tosh, Owen, Gwen
Warnings: Spoilers for 1x13, (End of Days) and Doctor Who episodes 3x11 (Utopia), 3x12 (The Sound of Drums) and 3x13 (Last of the Time Lords)
Synopsis: Jack comes back to Torchwood, but the year that never was has affected him more deeply than he's let anyone see yet.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, it belongs to the BBC.
A/N: Betaed by the wonderful miss_zedem and jadesfire2808, without whom my stories would make far less sense.
Tosh watched the silent, poor-resolution feed of Cardiff's external CCTV cameras and sighed. Just another typical day, tourists and locals alike strolling across the Plass up above, utterly unaware of Torchwood's lurking presence beneath their feet. She took control of one of the cameras for a moment, focussing in on Gwen leaving the local Starbucks with two cups of coffee, watching her cross to the waterfront. The dark rings under Gwen's eyes weren't visible on the CCTV input, but Tosh knew that they were there. She saw the same thing in the mirror every morning, and on Ianto's and Owen's faces too. Trying to get by without Jack had been more difficult that any of them would have believed, but they'd coped. Somehow.
Tosh let the camera go, and it swept back to its original position. Despite what Owen thought, Torchwood didn't have exclusive rights to those cameras, and Tosh didn't want to have the CCTV miss something because of her interference.
The sound of the main doors opening distracted her from her thoughts, and she waved Gwen over to her. Gwen crossed to Tosh's computer, placing Tosh's coffee next to her hand.
"You would not believe the queue in there," Gwen sighed. "Are Owen and Ianto back yet?"
Tosh shook her head, smiling slightly. If Gwen was griping, then all was normal. "No, not yet. They're still out on that artefact case."
A flicker of motion caught Tosh's eye. One of the CCTV cameras covering the Plass had shifted, its automatic programming telling it to follow the running man onscreen.
The running man in an Air Force greatcoat, heading straight for the water tower.
Tosh's hands moved almost of their own accord, zooming in on him. Gwen leaned over her shoulder as she did so, and Tosh felt Gwen's breath on her shoulder as the ex-policewoman exclaimed, "Is that Jack? Tosh, tell me that's Jack."
"It's Jack," Tosh confirmed as the two women watched him stop by the invisible lift. The sound of the paving slab up above hissing to one side made everything real and immediate, and Tosh barely waited to reset the camera before following Gwen to the lift.
The lift ascended. Paused. Descended again, and this time it brought a very welcome cargo. From his perch on the lift, Jack grinned at them as the lift came to a stop in its usual resting place. "Hey, girls. Miss me?"
Jack got his answer from both women as they immediately pounced on him. Tosh's senses reassured her over and over that the man they'd missed for so long had returned, apparently unharmed and still smiling. That was Jack's greatcoat, tickling her cheek as she buried her face in it. His solid body was perhaps thinner, although she didn't remember enough to be sure. Jack's own unique smell, freshly showered but with an odd new tang of oily smoke underneath. Jack's laugh, audible reassurance.
"Hey, if I'm going to get jumped on by two lovely ladies whenever I leave, I might do it more often," Jack teased. His arms went around their waists cautiously, as if he had been uncertain of his reception, then tightened on them.
Gwen, however took exception to the gentle jest. "You're not going anywhere, Captain Jack Harkness," she declared, poking him in the shoulder. "You're going to stay here, sit down and tell us exactly why you left and where you went!"
Jack stepped down off the lift platform, expertly detaching himself from Tosh and Gwen. "How about we leave it until Ianto and Owen can hear it, too?" Jack suggested. A faint frown crossed his face. "Where are they, anyway?"
"Out on a case together in Newport," Tosh reported as she followed Jack up to his office. The day-to-day style of her report was helping her gather her scattered wits. "There were reports of strange things happening to people when they handled some so-called Egyptian artefacts. We investigated, and found that they were alien artefacts disguised as Earth ones. Evidently the smugglers were using Earth as a half-way point."
"I like the sound of that past tense. Were?" Jack inquired, seating himself at the desk that Ianto had refused to let anyone touch. Gwen squeezed past Tosh and sat in the chair across from him, leaning forward intently.
Tosh smiled, her great satisfaction at the memory creeping into her expression. "We persuaded them to pack up and leave. Ianto found out how, actually - he was researching their culture, and he found that disguising something's nature is apparently a cardinal sin. Owen and Ianto are just chasing down the last of the artefacts that had ended up in human hands."
Jack shook his head in amusement. "Ianto and Owen out on a mission together, and they haven't killed each other?"
"You weren't here," Tosh said softly, turning her head aside and trying to keep the accusation out of her tone. "We had to manage on our own."
"Looks like Torchwood's been in safe hands," Jack said with an air of satisfaction, backed by a faint tinge of guilt and - was that relief? "I did well when I picked all of you." Tosh glowed for a moment at the compliment. "Oh, and one more thing?" Jack added plaintively.
"Yes, Jack? What is it?" Gwen asked eagerly.
"Could we order in some Chinese? I haven't had decent food in a . . . ages."
* * *
While Gwen dialled the Chinese place, Tosh escaped to her desk and activated her Bluetooth. "Owen? Ianto?"
"We're busy, Tosh. This had better be important," Owen said acerbically through her earpiece.
Before Tosh could say anything, she heard Ianto's amused voice come through as well. "Pay no attention, Tosh. He touched that last artefact, and it put him to sleep. He's only just woken up."
"Thank you, Ianto. I really needed your help with making me look like a twat," Owen retorted.
"Glad to help. Anyway, Tosh, what did you want to tell us?"
"It's Jack. He's here. He's come back." The words felt inadequate to convey Tosh's sense of the world suddenly turning the right way up again.
There was a pause of the other end of the line. "He's what?" came Owen's incredulous question.
"We're on our way back right now. Shut up, Owen."
* * *
"Harkness!" Owen bellowed as he stomped through the door. "Where the hell have you been, you bastard? The girls were worried sick!"
Not just the girls, Owen, Ianto added silently as he watched Owen advance on Jack and the two women standing near him. Their newly returned leader was sitting at Tosh's desk, hastily swallowing a mouthful of Chinese food and looking at the two men who'd just walked through the door. No - he was looking at Ianto.
Ianto gave him a small nod. Yes, Jack. We're all fine.
Jack acknowledged Ianto's nod with a barely visible twitch of his lips, and stood up just in time to get Owen's fist in his face. "Where the hell were you, Jack?" Owen half-shouted, his fists still balled.
Jack's head snapped aside and he stumbled back, missing Tosh's chair and ending up on the floor. His face was utterly blank, and it seemed to take him a few moments before he realised that he should be getting up. "It's nice to be missed," Jack said agreeably as he pushed himself to his feet. He hooked an arm around Owen's waist, only to have Owen shove him away. "Ianto, c'mon over here. Haven't you missed me too?"
"Very much, sir," Ianto admitted, covering the distance at something that was only a hair slower than a run. Jack pulled him into a hug, too, and Ianto didn't care who saw. His desire to hit Jack had been satisfied by Owen's punch, and any remaining resentment disappeared as he felt how thin Jack was. Wherever Jack had been, it hadn't been some alien holiday resort. The tight hold Jack had on him was causing minor problems in the breathing department, and that was odd. Jack wasn't usually this needy in public.
A discreet cough from Tosh made Jack pull away as if Ianto had burned him, but Ianto suspected that only he had spotted that flicker of fear on Jack's face.
"Yes. Right. Uh, I guess you want an explanation, right?" Jack's thousand-watt grin seemed unchanged, but its appearance was so brief as to be barely visible. "Why don't we all sit down? I'd hate for the food to go to waste." He moved abruptly to the sofa, grabbing Ianto and Tosh and seating them on either side of him. Ianto was conscious of Jack's thigh pressed against his, a constant reminder of his presence.
Gwen took Tosh's chair and passed over the food, a determined expression on her face. "I think we're owed an explanation, Jack."
"Too right, mate," Owen seconded as he perched on Tosh's desk. "And for the record, since when did Torchwood leaders go swanning off with Torchwood's number one enemy?"
To be honest, Ianto wanted to know the answer to that one himself.
"I, uh, take it that you know who I went with, then?" Jack looked slightly uncomfortable, something that Ianto had never seen him show to the team before. Jack had always been their confident, determined, unshakeable leader.
"It wasn't hard to figure it out, Jack," Tosh told him. "We saw the CCTV of you running across the Plass and grabbing the TARDIS. Then we found out that the hand in the jar had gone as well. Did that have something to do with the Doctor?"
"I had ten quid saying that it was yours," Owen chipped in, looking grumpier than usual.
"It's not mine. He kept it, anyway."
"Who kept it, Jack?" Ianto inquired gently. Even at his best, the Jack he knew was loath to part with his secrets, and he doubted that the one who'd come back was much different in that respect.
"The Doctor. It was the Doctor's hand," Jack said, so quietly that Ianto and the other three in the room had to strain to hear him. Then the grin flashed up again. "Anyway, no point in starting at the end," he continued in a more normal voice. "Well, I guess that's where it starts anyway, since the TARDIS's first destination was the end of the universe. There I was, trillions of years into the future, and the human race was still surviving. You should have seen them. They were fantastic. And there was this guy - he called himself Professor Yana. He was trying to send them to safety on this huge space ship. Well, the ship worked and they went, but something changed him. See, he'd lost his memories, and when he got them back, he went mad. He managed to get to Earth, here and now. We - the Doctor and me and his companion - followed, but we were eighteen months too late. He'd changed his name to Harold Saxon."
Ianto's eyes widened, and he saw Gwen's jaw drop. "Saxon? The Prime Minister?" she asked incredulously.
"Yup, that's him. Anyway. He'd been brainwashing the population, but we got to him and made him stop. He'd been using the Toclafane - you remember them, right?"
"What, those little alien metal balls? Yeah. They disappeared on us. So much for new technology." Owen scowled.
"Yeah, the Doc got rid of them, too. They shouldn't have been here. They killed the President of the United States, and Saxon died about the same time."
Judging by the faint twitching of Jack's leg against his when he mentioned Saxon, Ianto was certain that there was a lot that Jack was leaving out. But then again, that was only to be expected with something that Jack was telling them.
"And then the Doctor dropped you off here?" Ianto prompted, earning a grateful glance from Jack.
"Yeah. I couldn't abandon you. You're my responsibility. Torchwood is my responsibility," Jack said, a ghost of the old determination visible again. To the others, Ianto suspected that it looked real. But Ianto had grown very good at reading haunted expressions - ever since Torchwood One.
* * *
Ianto turned away from the Hub control panel as the lights dimmed to the 'night' setting. He and Jack were the only ones left in the Hub, now. Owen had left first, with Tosh following when she'd been reassured that Jack wasn't going anywhere. Gwen he'd almost had to peel out of the Hub, her concern for Jack subsumed at the last by her desire to go home to Rhys and apologise for how distracted she'd been.
"Ianto?"
Ianto turned to see Jack standing awkwardly nearby. He was still wearing his greatcoat, the buttons done up as if to armour himself against the world, and his hands in the pockets of his coat. It was, to Ianto, subtly horrifying. Jack was never awkward, rarely defensive, and never closed. But he was all three now, and Ianto wondered anew what had happened that Jack hadn't wanted to tell.
Jack shifted from one foot to the other. "Ianto? Stay with me?"
"You only had to ask," Ianto said softly. He reached into Jack's pocket and gently grasped his wrist to pull the hand out of the deep pocket. He hadn't anticipated Jack's violent flinch, Jack stepping back and yanking his hand away with an echo of that same fear that Ianto had seen earlier. "Ah. Sorry." Ianto stepped back, giving Jack time to compose himself.
"I, uh . . ."
"It's okay," Ianto told him. It wasn't okay, any fool could see that, but it was what Jack needed to hear. Jack smiled hesitantly, and Ianto walked by his side to Jack's room under his office without touching him.
Once down the ladder, Jack kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his greatcoat-covered knees. Ianto pulled off his own shoes and his suit jacket, then sat next to him. He chanced a comforting arm around Jack's shoulders, moving slowly to allow Jack to get away if he wanted to. Jack didn't pull away, though - instead, he leaned into Ianto's embrace as if he'd been starved of touch for years.
Somehow, they ended up lying down on the bed, Jack curled up fully clothed in Ianto's arms with his back to Ianto's chest. Ianto's back was pressed a little uncomfortably against the wall, but he wasn't going to complain. "So good," Jack sighed, the tension falling out of him. "Actually lying down. Do you know how long it's been since I . . ."
Jack shuddered in Ianto's hold. Ianto held him closer, without considering whether it was a good idea or not. "Jack. It's okay. It's me. It's Ianto."
"He killed you. Saxon killed you. He showed me the . . . the footage."
"I'm alive, Jack. I'm here. Saxon never killed me. It didn't happen."
Jack's body shook again, but this was the relief of a tightly-pent breath being released. "No. It didn't happen. He changed it all."
Eventually, Jack's breathing slowed as he fell asleep in Ianto's embrace. Ianto, reassured by Jack's nearby warmth, fell into slumber soon after.
* * *
Ianto was almost surprised when he woke up and found that Jack was still with him. At some point, Jack had wriggled around and now had his face pressed against Ianto's upper chest. Ianto could feel Jack's warm, too-rapid breath through the shirt he was still wearing. Could feel Jack's heartbeat thrumming near his own steady pulse. The digital clock showed that it was still a couple of hours before dawn, but Ianto knew that there was little chance of getting back to sleep now. Jack never slept long, even when things were quiet. "Jack?" he said carefully, not wanting to wake the other man if he was still asleep.
There was a gasp, and Jack pulled back, opening his eyes. "Ianto?"
"Right here," Ianto confirmed. He'd thought earlier that Jack had been trying to reassure his team that he was really there. It was, Ianto realised now, exactly the other way around.
"Ianto." Jack's eyes were flickering over Ianto's face, a touch of desperation in it.
"Mm-hmm. Oh, and Jack? Go clean your teeth. Your breath smells awful." Ianto smiled at him, taking the sting out of the accusation.
This got a weak chuckle in return. "Yeah. Guess it does."
Ianto waited for Jack to stumble to the bathroom before pulling his jacket and shoes back on. As he did, he felt the lump of his car keys in one pocket. He made up his mind on the spot.
* * *
A hour later, they were driving along a mountainous Welsh road in the dark. Ianto had left a note, packed sandwiches and a thermos, and generally made Jack's second exit of the Hub a far more orderly one than his previous unannounced flight. Ianto had switched the radio off after one particular song had caused Jack's expression to darken with fury, and they drove in silence. Only the occasional car passed them, headlights stabbing through the night.
It was false dawn by the time Ianto reached his destination, and there was enough light to see the sky by when he turned off the tarmac road and onto a rough gravel track. They bumped along for a while, Jack still silent, as Ianto's new Audi mechanically protested its mistreatment. Down into the valley and out again, the rising ridge of a mountain on both sides of the car. Fog began to gather around them, blocking Ianto's view.
They came to a halt halfway up, on a small flat circle of gravel that evidently acted as a parking place. Ianto switched the engine off and turned to Jack, who was giving him a quizzical look.
"So, Ianto. Care to tell me where we are?" Jack was looking uncertain, false cheer overlaying worry.
Ianto turned his head and smiled out at the mountain. "I doubt that the name of this place would mean much to you, Jack. It's just a place where I used to come as a child, when we were on holiday. I like it up here. So peaceful." He leaned back and grabbed the bag containing the sandwiches and thermos, then opened the door. "The sunrise is quite beautiful."
"Even in the fog?" Jack asked.
"The sun will burn the off fog soon enough."
Jack followed Ianto as they walked away from the car. When the fog had swallowed it, Ianto set out a picnic blanket with a plastic underside and gestured for Jack to sit down.
Munching sandwiches, they watched the sun rise. The light was pale and unearthly at first, glowing through the fog and turning the world into a place out of myth. Ianto almost had the sense that there was something near, out of sight, watching. Nothing hostile, but simply a presence. Then the sun rose above the horizon, brightening and burning off the early-morning fog. As the whiteness melted away, the presence dissipated, until it was clear that there was nobody at all for miles around.
How long they sat there, Ianto didn't know. It was only when Jack turned to him and remarked, "This . . . is actually nice," that Ianto was pulled back to a sense of time again.
It took a moment for his memory to repeat Jack's words to him. "You're surprised?" Ianto inquired.
"Dawn was -" Jack bit off the rest of the comment, hunching further into his coat. Ianto put an arm around his shoulders, and felt Jack trying to edge closer. The realisation that Jack trusted him enough to let go with him stunned Ianto. Jack wasn't playing the hero here. All that had gone, burned away in this moment like sunlight on fog.
"I've been there, you know," Ianto said conversationally as the world woke around them. The green, bright landscape seemed an incongruous setting for dark words, and the twitter of birdsong a strangely inappropriate soundtrack. "Canary Wharf. The cannibals. I was terrified, but I had to protect my friends. When that reason was gone, though, I had nothing to distract me any more." He paused, but Jack failed to respond to the inviting silence. "Gwen and Owen had each other. Tosh had Mary. Who do you talk to, Jack? When everything's gone to shit, who do you turn to, to understand you?"
This time, the silence was longer.
"I thought it was the Doctor," Jack said, eventually. "I thought that he'd understand me. I thought maybe he'd come back. But he didn't. He never goes back."
Slowly, haltingly, Jack explained the events of what was, from his perspective, the past year.
About having to die to launch the ship, and his conversation with the wrong Doctor.
About Yana being a Time Lord being the Master being Saxon.
About trying to stop him.
About Martha Jones walking the Earth to save it, and his year aboard the Valiant.
About the rage that had been his constant companion.
About the quiet death of the Master, with the Doctor weeping over his dead body the way he'd never wept for Jack.
About the knowledge that he was an unkillable tool and not a person to the Doctor.
About still wanting to be what the Doctor needed, showing everyone else what they needed to see.
About the exhaustion that had hit when the rage no longer had a target.
All that time, as Jack talked, Ianto sat there with his arm around Jack's shoulders. He knew that this one day wouldn't fix Jack.
But here and now, it was a start.
Author: crystalshard
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Tosh, Owen, Gwen
Warnings: Spoilers for 1x13, (End of Days) and Doctor Who episodes 3x11 (Utopia), 3x12 (The Sound of Drums) and 3x13 (Last of the Time Lords)
Synopsis: Jack comes back to Torchwood, but the year that never was has affected him more deeply than he's let anyone see yet.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, it belongs to the BBC.
A/N: Betaed by the wonderful miss_zedem and jadesfire2808, without whom my stories would make far less sense.
Tosh watched the silent, poor-resolution feed of Cardiff's external CCTV cameras and sighed. Just another typical day, tourists and locals alike strolling across the Plass up above, utterly unaware of Torchwood's lurking presence beneath their feet. She took control of one of the cameras for a moment, focussing in on Gwen leaving the local Starbucks with two cups of coffee, watching her cross to the waterfront. The dark rings under Gwen's eyes weren't visible on the CCTV input, but Tosh knew that they were there. She saw the same thing in the mirror every morning, and on Ianto's and Owen's faces too. Trying to get by without Jack had been more difficult that any of them would have believed, but they'd coped. Somehow.
Tosh let the camera go, and it swept back to its original position. Despite what Owen thought, Torchwood didn't have exclusive rights to those cameras, and Tosh didn't want to have the CCTV miss something because of her interference.
The sound of the main doors opening distracted her from her thoughts, and she waved Gwen over to her. Gwen crossed to Tosh's computer, placing Tosh's coffee next to her hand.
"You would not believe the queue in there," Gwen sighed. "Are Owen and Ianto back yet?"
Tosh shook her head, smiling slightly. If Gwen was griping, then all was normal. "No, not yet. They're still out on that artefact case."
A flicker of motion caught Tosh's eye. One of the CCTV cameras covering the Plass had shifted, its automatic programming telling it to follow the running man onscreen.
The running man in an Air Force greatcoat, heading straight for the water tower.
Tosh's hands moved almost of their own accord, zooming in on him. Gwen leaned over her shoulder as she did so, and Tosh felt Gwen's breath on her shoulder as the ex-policewoman exclaimed, "Is that Jack? Tosh, tell me that's Jack."
"It's Jack," Tosh confirmed as the two women watched him stop by the invisible lift. The sound of the paving slab up above hissing to one side made everything real and immediate, and Tosh barely waited to reset the camera before following Gwen to the lift.
The lift ascended. Paused. Descended again, and this time it brought a very welcome cargo. From his perch on the lift, Jack grinned at them as the lift came to a stop in its usual resting place. "Hey, girls. Miss me?"
Jack got his answer from both women as they immediately pounced on him. Tosh's senses reassured her over and over that the man they'd missed for so long had returned, apparently unharmed and still smiling. That was Jack's greatcoat, tickling her cheek as she buried her face in it. His solid body was perhaps thinner, although she didn't remember enough to be sure. Jack's own unique smell, freshly showered but with an odd new tang of oily smoke underneath. Jack's laugh, audible reassurance.
"Hey, if I'm going to get jumped on by two lovely ladies whenever I leave, I might do it more often," Jack teased. His arms went around their waists cautiously, as if he had been uncertain of his reception, then tightened on them.
Gwen, however took exception to the gentle jest. "You're not going anywhere, Captain Jack Harkness," she declared, poking him in the shoulder. "You're going to stay here, sit down and tell us exactly why you left and where you went!"
Jack stepped down off the lift platform, expertly detaching himself from Tosh and Gwen. "How about we leave it until Ianto and Owen can hear it, too?" Jack suggested. A faint frown crossed his face. "Where are they, anyway?"
"Out on a case together in Newport," Tosh reported as she followed Jack up to his office. The day-to-day style of her report was helping her gather her scattered wits. "There were reports of strange things happening to people when they handled some so-called Egyptian artefacts. We investigated, and found that they were alien artefacts disguised as Earth ones. Evidently the smugglers were using Earth as a half-way point."
"I like the sound of that past tense. Were?" Jack inquired, seating himself at the desk that Ianto had refused to let anyone touch. Gwen squeezed past Tosh and sat in the chair across from him, leaning forward intently.
Tosh smiled, her great satisfaction at the memory creeping into her expression. "We persuaded them to pack up and leave. Ianto found out how, actually - he was researching their culture, and he found that disguising something's nature is apparently a cardinal sin. Owen and Ianto are just chasing down the last of the artefacts that had ended up in human hands."
Jack shook his head in amusement. "Ianto and Owen out on a mission together, and they haven't killed each other?"
"You weren't here," Tosh said softly, turning her head aside and trying to keep the accusation out of her tone. "We had to manage on our own."
"Looks like Torchwood's been in safe hands," Jack said with an air of satisfaction, backed by a faint tinge of guilt and - was that relief? "I did well when I picked all of you." Tosh glowed for a moment at the compliment. "Oh, and one more thing?" Jack added plaintively.
"Yes, Jack? What is it?" Gwen asked eagerly.
"Could we order in some Chinese? I haven't had decent food in a . . . ages."
* * *
While Gwen dialled the Chinese place, Tosh escaped to her desk and activated her Bluetooth. "Owen? Ianto?"
"We're busy, Tosh. This had better be important," Owen said acerbically through her earpiece.
Before Tosh could say anything, she heard Ianto's amused voice come through as well. "Pay no attention, Tosh. He touched that last artefact, and it put him to sleep. He's only just woken up."
"Thank you, Ianto. I really needed your help with making me look like a twat," Owen retorted.
"Glad to help. Anyway, Tosh, what did you want to tell us?"
"It's Jack. He's here. He's come back." The words felt inadequate to convey Tosh's sense of the world suddenly turning the right way up again.
There was a pause of the other end of the line. "He's what?" came Owen's incredulous question.
"We're on our way back right now. Shut up, Owen."
* * *
"Harkness!" Owen bellowed as he stomped through the door. "Where the hell have you been, you bastard? The girls were worried sick!"
Not just the girls, Owen, Ianto added silently as he watched Owen advance on Jack and the two women standing near him. Their newly returned leader was sitting at Tosh's desk, hastily swallowing a mouthful of Chinese food and looking at the two men who'd just walked through the door. No - he was looking at Ianto.
Ianto gave him a small nod. Yes, Jack. We're all fine.
Jack acknowledged Ianto's nod with a barely visible twitch of his lips, and stood up just in time to get Owen's fist in his face. "Where the hell were you, Jack?" Owen half-shouted, his fists still balled.
Jack's head snapped aside and he stumbled back, missing Tosh's chair and ending up on the floor. His face was utterly blank, and it seemed to take him a few moments before he realised that he should be getting up. "It's nice to be missed," Jack said agreeably as he pushed himself to his feet. He hooked an arm around Owen's waist, only to have Owen shove him away. "Ianto, c'mon over here. Haven't you missed me too?"
"Very much, sir," Ianto admitted, covering the distance at something that was only a hair slower than a run. Jack pulled him into a hug, too, and Ianto didn't care who saw. His desire to hit Jack had been satisfied by Owen's punch, and any remaining resentment disappeared as he felt how thin Jack was. Wherever Jack had been, it hadn't been some alien holiday resort. The tight hold Jack had on him was causing minor problems in the breathing department, and that was odd. Jack wasn't usually this needy in public.
A discreet cough from Tosh made Jack pull away as if Ianto had burned him, but Ianto suspected that only he had spotted that flicker of fear on Jack's face.
"Yes. Right. Uh, I guess you want an explanation, right?" Jack's thousand-watt grin seemed unchanged, but its appearance was so brief as to be barely visible. "Why don't we all sit down? I'd hate for the food to go to waste." He moved abruptly to the sofa, grabbing Ianto and Tosh and seating them on either side of him. Ianto was conscious of Jack's thigh pressed against his, a constant reminder of his presence.
Gwen took Tosh's chair and passed over the food, a determined expression on her face. "I think we're owed an explanation, Jack."
"Too right, mate," Owen seconded as he perched on Tosh's desk. "And for the record, since when did Torchwood leaders go swanning off with Torchwood's number one enemy?"
To be honest, Ianto wanted to know the answer to that one himself.
"I, uh, take it that you know who I went with, then?" Jack looked slightly uncomfortable, something that Ianto had never seen him show to the team before. Jack had always been their confident, determined, unshakeable leader.
"It wasn't hard to figure it out, Jack," Tosh told him. "We saw the CCTV of you running across the Plass and grabbing the TARDIS. Then we found out that the hand in the jar had gone as well. Did that have something to do with the Doctor?"
"I had ten quid saying that it was yours," Owen chipped in, looking grumpier than usual.
"It's not mine. He kept it, anyway."
"Who kept it, Jack?" Ianto inquired gently. Even at his best, the Jack he knew was loath to part with his secrets, and he doubted that the one who'd come back was much different in that respect.
"The Doctor. It was the Doctor's hand," Jack said, so quietly that Ianto and the other three in the room had to strain to hear him. Then the grin flashed up again. "Anyway, no point in starting at the end," he continued in a more normal voice. "Well, I guess that's where it starts anyway, since the TARDIS's first destination was the end of the universe. There I was, trillions of years into the future, and the human race was still surviving. You should have seen them. They were fantastic. And there was this guy - he called himself Professor Yana. He was trying to send them to safety on this huge space ship. Well, the ship worked and they went, but something changed him. See, he'd lost his memories, and when he got them back, he went mad. He managed to get to Earth, here and now. We - the Doctor and me and his companion - followed, but we were eighteen months too late. He'd changed his name to Harold Saxon."
Ianto's eyes widened, and he saw Gwen's jaw drop. "Saxon? The Prime Minister?" she asked incredulously.
"Yup, that's him. Anyway. He'd been brainwashing the population, but we got to him and made him stop. He'd been using the Toclafane - you remember them, right?"
"What, those little alien metal balls? Yeah. They disappeared on us. So much for new technology." Owen scowled.
"Yeah, the Doc got rid of them, too. They shouldn't have been here. They killed the President of the United States, and Saxon died about the same time."
Judging by the faint twitching of Jack's leg against his when he mentioned Saxon, Ianto was certain that there was a lot that Jack was leaving out. But then again, that was only to be expected with something that Jack was telling them.
"And then the Doctor dropped you off here?" Ianto prompted, earning a grateful glance from Jack.
"Yeah. I couldn't abandon you. You're my responsibility. Torchwood is my responsibility," Jack said, a ghost of the old determination visible again. To the others, Ianto suspected that it looked real. But Ianto had grown very good at reading haunted expressions - ever since Torchwood One.
* * *
Ianto turned away from the Hub control panel as the lights dimmed to the 'night' setting. He and Jack were the only ones left in the Hub, now. Owen had left first, with Tosh following when she'd been reassured that Jack wasn't going anywhere. Gwen he'd almost had to peel out of the Hub, her concern for Jack subsumed at the last by her desire to go home to Rhys and apologise for how distracted she'd been.
"Ianto?"
Ianto turned to see Jack standing awkwardly nearby. He was still wearing his greatcoat, the buttons done up as if to armour himself against the world, and his hands in the pockets of his coat. It was, to Ianto, subtly horrifying. Jack was never awkward, rarely defensive, and never closed. But he was all three now, and Ianto wondered anew what had happened that Jack hadn't wanted to tell.
Jack shifted from one foot to the other. "Ianto? Stay with me?"
"You only had to ask," Ianto said softly. He reached into Jack's pocket and gently grasped his wrist to pull the hand out of the deep pocket. He hadn't anticipated Jack's violent flinch, Jack stepping back and yanking his hand away with an echo of that same fear that Ianto had seen earlier. "Ah. Sorry." Ianto stepped back, giving Jack time to compose himself.
"I, uh . . ."
"It's okay," Ianto told him. It wasn't okay, any fool could see that, but it was what Jack needed to hear. Jack smiled hesitantly, and Ianto walked by his side to Jack's room under his office without touching him.
Once down the ladder, Jack kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his greatcoat-covered knees. Ianto pulled off his own shoes and his suit jacket, then sat next to him. He chanced a comforting arm around Jack's shoulders, moving slowly to allow Jack to get away if he wanted to. Jack didn't pull away, though - instead, he leaned into Ianto's embrace as if he'd been starved of touch for years.
Somehow, they ended up lying down on the bed, Jack curled up fully clothed in Ianto's arms with his back to Ianto's chest. Ianto's back was pressed a little uncomfortably against the wall, but he wasn't going to complain. "So good," Jack sighed, the tension falling out of him. "Actually lying down. Do you know how long it's been since I . . ."
Jack shuddered in Ianto's hold. Ianto held him closer, without considering whether it was a good idea or not. "Jack. It's okay. It's me. It's Ianto."
"He killed you. Saxon killed you. He showed me the . . . the footage."
"I'm alive, Jack. I'm here. Saxon never killed me. It didn't happen."
Jack's body shook again, but this was the relief of a tightly-pent breath being released. "No. It didn't happen. He changed it all."
Eventually, Jack's breathing slowed as he fell asleep in Ianto's embrace. Ianto, reassured by Jack's nearby warmth, fell into slumber soon after.
* * *
Ianto was almost surprised when he woke up and found that Jack was still with him. At some point, Jack had wriggled around and now had his face pressed against Ianto's upper chest. Ianto could feel Jack's warm, too-rapid breath through the shirt he was still wearing. Could feel Jack's heartbeat thrumming near his own steady pulse. The digital clock showed that it was still a couple of hours before dawn, but Ianto knew that there was little chance of getting back to sleep now. Jack never slept long, even when things were quiet. "Jack?" he said carefully, not wanting to wake the other man if he was still asleep.
There was a gasp, and Jack pulled back, opening his eyes. "Ianto?"
"Right here," Ianto confirmed. He'd thought earlier that Jack had been trying to reassure his team that he was really there. It was, Ianto realised now, exactly the other way around.
"Ianto." Jack's eyes were flickering over Ianto's face, a touch of desperation in it.
"Mm-hmm. Oh, and Jack? Go clean your teeth. Your breath smells awful." Ianto smiled at him, taking the sting out of the accusation.
This got a weak chuckle in return. "Yeah. Guess it does."
Ianto waited for Jack to stumble to the bathroom before pulling his jacket and shoes back on. As he did, he felt the lump of his car keys in one pocket. He made up his mind on the spot.
* * *
A hour later, they were driving along a mountainous Welsh road in the dark. Ianto had left a note, packed sandwiches and a thermos, and generally made Jack's second exit of the Hub a far more orderly one than his previous unannounced flight. Ianto had switched the radio off after one particular song had caused Jack's expression to darken with fury, and they drove in silence. Only the occasional car passed them, headlights stabbing through the night.
It was false dawn by the time Ianto reached his destination, and there was enough light to see the sky by when he turned off the tarmac road and onto a rough gravel track. They bumped along for a while, Jack still silent, as Ianto's new Audi mechanically protested its mistreatment. Down into the valley and out again, the rising ridge of a mountain on both sides of the car. Fog began to gather around them, blocking Ianto's view.
They came to a halt halfway up, on a small flat circle of gravel that evidently acted as a parking place. Ianto switched the engine off and turned to Jack, who was giving him a quizzical look.
"So, Ianto. Care to tell me where we are?" Jack was looking uncertain, false cheer overlaying worry.
Ianto turned his head and smiled out at the mountain. "I doubt that the name of this place would mean much to you, Jack. It's just a place where I used to come as a child, when we were on holiday. I like it up here. So peaceful." He leaned back and grabbed the bag containing the sandwiches and thermos, then opened the door. "The sunrise is quite beautiful."
"Even in the fog?" Jack asked.
"The sun will burn the off fog soon enough."
Jack followed Ianto as they walked away from the car. When the fog had swallowed it, Ianto set out a picnic blanket with a plastic underside and gestured for Jack to sit down.
Munching sandwiches, they watched the sun rise. The light was pale and unearthly at first, glowing through the fog and turning the world into a place out of myth. Ianto almost had the sense that there was something near, out of sight, watching. Nothing hostile, but simply a presence. Then the sun rose above the horizon, brightening and burning off the early-morning fog. As the whiteness melted away, the presence dissipated, until it was clear that there was nobody at all for miles around.
How long they sat there, Ianto didn't know. It was only when Jack turned to him and remarked, "This . . . is actually nice," that Ianto was pulled back to a sense of time again.
It took a moment for his memory to repeat Jack's words to him. "You're surprised?" Ianto inquired.
"Dawn was -" Jack bit off the rest of the comment, hunching further into his coat. Ianto put an arm around his shoulders, and felt Jack trying to edge closer. The realisation that Jack trusted him enough to let go with him stunned Ianto. Jack wasn't playing the hero here. All that had gone, burned away in this moment like sunlight on fog.
"I've been there, you know," Ianto said conversationally as the world woke around them. The green, bright landscape seemed an incongruous setting for dark words, and the twitter of birdsong a strangely inappropriate soundtrack. "Canary Wharf. The cannibals. I was terrified, but I had to protect my friends. When that reason was gone, though, I had nothing to distract me any more." He paused, but Jack failed to respond to the inviting silence. "Gwen and Owen had each other. Tosh had Mary. Who do you talk to, Jack? When everything's gone to shit, who do you turn to, to understand you?"
This time, the silence was longer.
"I thought it was the Doctor," Jack said, eventually. "I thought that he'd understand me. I thought maybe he'd come back. But he didn't. He never goes back."
Slowly, haltingly, Jack explained the events of what was, from his perspective, the past year.
About having to die to launch the ship, and his conversation with the wrong Doctor.
About Yana being a Time Lord being the Master being Saxon.
About trying to stop him.
About Martha Jones walking the Earth to save it, and his year aboard the Valiant.
About the rage that had been his constant companion.
About the quiet death of the Master, with the Doctor weeping over his dead body the way he'd never wept for Jack.
About the knowledge that he was an unkillable tool and not a person to the Doctor.
About still wanting to be what the Doctor needed, showing everyone else what they needed to see.
About the exhaustion that had hit when the rage no longer had a target.
All that time, as Jack talked, Ianto sat there with his arm around Jack's shoulders. He knew that this one day wouldn't fix Jack.
But here and now, it was a start.