Fic: Get Loved, Make More, Try to Stay Alive (7/8)
part 6
Gwen lasted three days before she cornered him and asked him what was wrong.
Ianto frowned, giving her his best baffled look. He'd been doing really well, even pretending to take the bloody antibiotics till they were gone. He and Gwen had both been a little tense and tired for weeks now. Ianto was fooling Jack, or at least getting Jack to let him pass. Gwen shouldn't have noticed any difference.
"Every time Jack leaves the room, you relax," Gwen whispered. "Just a little. Ianto, is something--"
Ianto realized he was giving Gwen an actually baffled look, now. She was such a police officer sometimes.
"No, Gwen, it's all right," Ianto said slowly. "I just walked into a door, honestly."
Gwen's mouth went tight, and she gave him a filthy, furious look. "Ianto--"
"Fell down the stairs?"
"Ianto."
"It was my own fault, I burnt his dinner," Ianto tried.
Gwen's mouth twitched. "Ianto Jones, that is not funny."
"Don't laugh, then," Ianto advised, and turned back to checking the supply of coffee filters. "It's nothing, Gwen, just--well, what if you worked with Rhys every day?"
Gwen blew out a breath, and then muttered something that sounded very like, "Wouldn't be me falling down the stairs." But she squeezed Ianto's shoulder as she left.
He spent a little extra time sorting the coffee filters, practicing his smile. It really wasn't funny at all.
When the Daleks came--when Jack said he was sorry, said they were dead, when he included himself in that statement--Ianto thought that was going to be it, then. He was going to die. Gwen, too, probably. He felt worse for Gwen than himself. Perhaps he could find some way, sacrifice himself for her. That would be enough to make Jack remember him as brave, two hundred years from now, wouldn't it?
Jack would survive, of course, and he'd find some way to save the world. That was what Jack did, after all, and the Daleks wouldn't know to destroy one little bit of technology tucked away in the Hub, if they even could. Indiana--the fetus--didn't show a life sign, in stasis. There wouldn't be anything to exterminate, by their way of thinking.
Ianto had seen the future, seen it and touched it and worn its clothes and slept in its bed. He knew it would come out all right. It had to.
When Ianto saw the Doctor's face again--saw him smiling, despite everything, so pleased to see all his people--he knew everything would be all right. With the Doctor and Jack on the scene, things had to sort out for the best. Ianto remembered, suddenly, that the last thing the Doctor had done, before stepping back into the TARDIS, was to pull Ianto into a hug.
He'd been in shock at the time, or as good as, and had only stood there stiffly, head bowed. The Doctor had squeezed him close anyway, set one hand on the back of Ianto's head like he was an infant, a child to protect. They all were, as far as the Doctor was concerned. He wouldn't fail them, not even against the Daleks.
Jack left--promised to come back, of course, and Ianto gave him the smile he wanted, and would want to remember later--and that all seemed like part of the obvious progression of events. Jack had to be with the Doctor if he was going to survive with the Doctor, if he and the Doctor were going to save the world. And Ianto and Gwen would stay in the Hub, and--
And then Jack was gone, and the Daleks were descending, and Ianto thought of what the Doctor had said: the future is always yours to choose, but the consequences get dire.
It could all go wrong here--the future could change, could cease to be, and if the Daleks won, or just did enough damage in losing, then Indy's life would never play out, or never play out the way Ianto had seen it. The Daleks were threatening that, threatening not just Ianto's ordinary, difficult, crazed world, but also the safe, distant time where Jack had chosen to raise their son. They would all go down together.
So Ianto took the clip from Gwen's hand, and got ready to go down fighting. If there was anything he could do to help defeat those knobbly robot bastards, he'd be damned sure to do it.
But as it turned out, Tosh had already done it for them.
By the time he saw Jack again--with Martha in tow, as well as Mickey Smith, who looked around with the proprietary air of a man who intends to stay a while--Ianto had realized that that hadn't been his moment, and had settled down to wait for the next crisis.
He really hoped that Jack hadn't been planning to lie to Indiana when he said Ianto died bravely, that it hadn't been a random accident. He really, really hoped that it hadn't been, say, fatal electrocution while arguing with Mickey over how best to reroute the power cables to the sublevels until they cleaned up the Dalek damage, mainly because that would probably mean Mickey had been right.
As it turned out, Mickey was right, but no one got electrocuted. Ianto awarded himself partial credit for that.
Martha took him aside, during the first quiet moment after they'd all hugged and said hello--after he'd got back from saying hello to Jack in the semi-privacy of Jack's office--and said very softly that the Doctor said hello, and it had been good to see him looking well.
Martha wasn't just passing on greetings. Martha had helped the Doctor pry his son's fingers from his wrist, and she'd helped him erase the marks so Jack wouldn't know until he had to. Ianto looked her in the eye and knew she wasn't expecting him to tell her that he was fine, nor expecting him to break down and cry on her shoulder.
Ianto shrugged, and shaped his mouth into something not entirely unlike a smile. "In London, people used to say it wasn't how long you lived, it was how many things you survived to have nightmares about."
Martha nodded briefly, and gave him something a little bit like a smile back. "You've got a whole new set after today, then."
Ianto nodded.
"As long as you know there's someone who knows what's been waking you up at night," Martha said, and squeezed his hand. "If you ever need someone to tell you it really happened..."
She'd been to the end of the world with Jack, sometime last year when the world hadn't ended after all. She'd know a thing or two about wondering, as well.
Ianto nodded, and did not tell her he never wondered, never past the moment he touched his own wrist and felt the cord there. It was the thought that counted. "Thank you. And if you see him again, tell him thank you for me as well. I don't know whether I managed to--"
Martha rolled her eyes. "You got terrifyingly polite. Trust me, you thanked him. But I'll tell him again, if I see him before you do."
It took weeks for the rain to stop. The workstations in the Hub were all shrouded in plastic sheeting to protect the electronics from the water that found its way in everywhere, even after the weather had cleared outside and the worst of the damage had been repaired. The place was full of odd rattling and rustling and the constant tap-tapping of drips no one could trace back to a source. No one stayed later than they had to, and tonight everyone but Ianto--and Jack, of course--had managed to bugger off by tea time.
They'd all taken to playing music, or running white noise generators, to keep from going utterly mad. Odd noises were more common than not, and Ianto hardly noticed them. Still, something caught his ear--just for a moment, an odd noise that jumped out at him though he couldn't say what it sounded like, or even how long it lasted.
Ianto shook his head--the sound sent a shiver down his spine, and tickled at his ear like a gnat--and started checking monitors. It was an odder-than-odd noise; it might be something...
Jack appeared just as Ianto found the sound-and-energy signature.
"Did you hear something?" Jack said. "I thought I..."
Ianto pointed to the screen just as the system pulled up the closest historical matches to the peculiar signature. One from a few years ago; one from last spring, the day Jack disappeared.
"Those are the TARDIS," Jack said. "The Doctor. But this--"
Ianto nodded. "It's not a match. Not within the parameters of variation with the first two. So it's..."
"A TARDIS," Jack breathed. "Or something is wrong with the Doctor's, or--or something is very wrong."
Ianto nodded. It had been another Time Lord, when Jack had had that year no one else remembered--the Master, who had tortured Jack and the Doctor for that year. Jack said he was dead, but if one more Time Lord could show up, why not another?
On the other hand, what were the odds that the Doctor was the only surviving Time Lord who wasn't a homicidal maniac?
Ianto didn't say it aloud. That was well beyond asking what could possibly go wrong.
They criss-crossed the Plass together twice. "It ought to be here, somewhere," Jack said again. "The Rift is a fueling point, and the reading was in the same proximity."
"But if it's not the Doctor's TARDIS we may not be able to see it at all," Ianto repeated, taking up the second half of the argument that Jack had played out all by himself the first few times.
"Still," Jack said, stopping by the Water Tower to look around again. "Still. There ought to be something out of place, someone..."
Dusk was falling. There were people everywhere now that the weather had settled down, a few official vehicles parked, vendors here and there.
Ianto didn't bother looking. Instead he watched Jack searching for something he couldn't see. "But if it's got a working chameleon circuit, we won't be able to tell."
Jack sighed. "I'm going to go down and check the monitors again. You stay here, see if anything jumps out at you. I'll try to direct you if I can pinpoint the location better."
Ianto nodded, and set off in another random direction as Jack stepped onto the lift and disappeared.
It wasn't a sound this time, just a flash of color--bright blue, nearly the blue of the TARDIS--but of course it wasn't the TARDIS. All Ianto saw when he looked was a dark-haired young man in jeans and a bright blue t-shirt. There was no reason to think a TARDIS had to be blue, anyway; that was just the police-box shape.
Still, Ianto couldn't take his eyes off the man; there was something familiar about him, the way he moved. He was looking around as he walked--strolled, really. He was an obvious tourist, and like any tourist he stopped in mid-stride when something caught his eye, and changed direction randomly.
Ianto was still walking, tailing the man almost effortlessly. He was within five meters when the man abruptly changed direction again, showing Ianto his face. He looked more familiar, then, naggingly familiar. Ianto stopped walking, and his heart and his throat got it before he did, going so tight he couldn't move or breathe.
The man--the boy--got it faster, even though he wasn't looking. His gaze swept across Ianto and after a half-second's delay his face lit up, shocked and delighted. When he said, "Dad!" his voice was different, but Ianto still recognized his own name in his son's mouth.
Ianto barely had time to notice that Indiana was taller than he was now--he had to be nearly Ianto's own age, which was going to make his head hurt when he had time to think about it--before he was grabbed in a fierce hug. "Dad, Dad, that was--ha! That was way too easy."
Indiana was nearly laughing, giddy, and Ianto clutched at his t-shirt, trying to keep his balance--of course he recognized that shade of blue; half his hair had been that color once. It was his special DEAD t-shirt from Disaster Day. Indiana must have swiped it from the collection of clothes he'd left behind. Must have kept it for years, decades, to wear it now.
Ianto pushed back to look at him, blinking fast and trying to keep some kind of composure. "Indiana--is it still Indiana?"
Indy grinned. "Yeah, yeah--just about everyone calls me that, now. I couldn't stay Junior forever."
"No, you shouldn't," Ianto agreed, looking up at this happy young man, this man--his son--who'd come and found him. He looked him over again, and blurted, "Did you have to have the jeans lengthened?"
Indy laughed. "Yeah, an inch or two. Dad was right about eating my vegetables, I guess."
Ianto shook his head and finally managed to ask the question he ought to have asked first. "Indy, what are you doing here? How did you get here?"
"Oh." Indiana looked around, and Ianto wondered if his own face that transparent when he tried to keep a secret. It was strange, the multitude of faces he saw in Indy's face--his own, and Jack's, and that of the child he'd known--he'd stopped seeing Indy as a composite of inherited features almost at once, but now he shifted in and out of focus with every change of expression, like a kaleidoscope.
"I'm traveling with a friend," Indy said finally. "Dad says it's my gap year--does that mean anything to you? But we're here because she needed to refuel, and I wanted to see Cardiff--and you, if I could, safely. That's all. Just visiting."
"A friend," Ianto repeated neutrally, because apparently there was no going back once you'd turned into your father, and all he could hear was she.
The light was getting dodgy, but Ianto could swear Indy blushed a little. "Not that kind! No matter what horrifying crush I had on her when I was about ten years old. No. We're practically adopted cousins. The Doctor introduced us, of course. He started teaching us both Gallifreyan together when I was seven--my accent was always better," Indy added, a hint of a child's triumph bleeding through.
That was easier to picture, even with this adult Indiana before him--Ianto had seen him there on that last day, six years old and already getting his first lessons from the Doctor, aboard the TARDIS.
"You were all right, then," Ianto said cautiously.
Indy went serious all at once, teeth raking over his lower lip, and that expression Ianto recognized; it was so much like looking in a mirror that he had something like vertigo until Indy spoke. "Yeah, Dad, I--I was, really. I mean, I ran the fuck away from home on my seventh birthday when the Doctor showed up again, but--look, he brought me this."
Indy twisted, digging through a canvas messenger bag, and came up with a battered leather book, obviously much-read and much-loved. Ianto took it cautiously from his hand, flipping through the neatly-written pages without looking. His book, the one he'd written for Indy; the Doctor had been as good as his word.
Ianto turned to the last page. He'd never been able to remember what he wrote.
It took him a moment to decipher the unsteady scrawl.
Indiana,
Forgive me. I had to.
I am, always, everywhere,
Your dad who died.
Ianto avoided Indy's eyes as he handed the book back, looking idly around the Plass as he put it away. Indy had come to see him, wearing his clothes and carrying his book; asking whether he was forgiven after that would be rather pathetically superfluous.
"So," Indy said brightly. "Dad told me a story once about this restaurant near the--the Plass, isn't this? Right? And I think it's the same one you talked about in--"
"Ianto!"
Ianto froze, and saw Indy freeze. Jack's voice was bright, the scolding tone at least half joking--a stranger wouldn't hear the scold at all, but of course Indy wasn't a stranger.
Fuck.
He was coming from behind Ianto--Indy was staring over Ianto's shoulder with frozen fascination--and then Jack's hand was on his shoulder and Jack was saying warmly, "Are you going to intro--"
Ianto saw it on Indy's face--the freeze giving way to horror--and swung around to slap a hand unerringly over Jack's mouth. "Fuck, Jack, not a word, don't."
Jack jerked back--Ianto had, possibly, hit him kind of hard there--but Ianto kept his hand sealed over Jack's mouth. "Don't say it, don't even think it. As you value my sanity. Or yours. Or his."
Not that Jack had any idea whose sanity he was threatening, or why.
Indy, behind him, wasn't making a sound. Ianto dared a glance back to check that he was still breathing. He looked a little pale--the lights were coming on, now, they made everyone look sickly--but he was standing his ground, staring at Jack as if hypnotized.
Ianto looked back at Jack, who was staring just the same.
There was no way around it. If Jack didn't find out who Indy was now, he'd just keep thinking about it--of course he'd remember. He'd figure it out eventually, maybe sometime when Ianto wasn't there to know, to try to fix it. And this had to be fixed--if nothing else, Jack had been honestly shocked when Ianto appeared in the future. He hadn't known that Ianto would ever see their son. He couldn't know this had happened.
Thank God for retcon.
"Look at him," Ianto said softly. "Jack. His face. Look at him properly, and think."
Jack blinked a couple of times, and then turned his gaze on Ianto, eyes wide. Ianto let his hand down, but Jack didn't say anything right away, just looked quickly from Ianto to Indy and back. "He's--you're--our..."
Jack didn't know his name, Ianto realized. Jack hadn't named him yet.
Jack smiled again, bright and charming and rapidly regaining his equilibrium, but when Ianto looked back at Indy he was still looking a little horrified.
"Nice to meet you," Jack said, extending a hand, but Indy actually shifted his weight backward, eyes wide and staring, hands at his sides. "Are you okay? Is it me? Do I--oh, God, do I look that much different by the time you get here?"
Indy shook his head slowly, and finally spoke, his voice faint. "You've never done personal magnetism at me before--could you stop, please? It's freaking me out."
"Oh," Jack said, taken aback. "Sorry, yeah."
He looked away, shook himself from the shoulders, and then looked up again--but he was very nearly a different man, with different body language, a different smile.
He was halfway to being Indy's dad, and Ianto's breath caught in recognition. He'd never even understood that that was the difference, that he was seeing Jack when he belonged to someone he'd never had to charm.
"That better?"
But Indy was already grinning, grabbing his father in a hug, and Jack laughed and hugged him back. The synchrony with which they both reached for Ianto was better than a paternity test. Ianto let himself be folded in, an arm around each of them, until Indy pushed away.
"Is this--this is bad, though, isn't it? Dad's not supposed to--"
Jack looked quickly back and forth between them, because Indy was unmistakably addressing Ianto, and just as unmistakably referring to his dad in the third person. "Ianto? Wait, you know each other already. How--"
And then Jack caught his wrist, digging a thumb under his wristwatch to touch the bracelet he always wore there.
Ianto nodded to Indy. "I'll take care of it, but we'd better cut our visit short--Jack, there's nothing to worry about. The ship we saw belongs to a friend of the Doctor's. You need to come with me. You're not meant to know any of this."
Jack had his eyes on Indy, a last longing look. "The Hub? I've got--"
Ianto shook his head. "My flat, actually. I've got supplies you won't miss, after."
Jack nodded, then shifted his attention abruptly from Indy to Ianto. He let go of Ianto's wrist after a quick squeeze, and said, "I know the way. I assume you'll catch up."
Ianto wasted a few precious seconds watching Jack walk away, overwhelmed by him as he so often was. It was always just as startling.
Then he turned back to Indiana to say goodbye all over again, one more last time.
Indy was smiling, and Ianto couldn't honestly tell whether it was stiff upper lip or just blithe unconcern. Ianto had been dead for most of Indy's life, after all; getting to see him was a lark, and the end of the lark was just that. Still, Indy returned his hug with gratifying enthusiasm, and let Ianto tug him down to press a kiss to his forehead.
"Take care of yourself, and this girl-cousin-friend of yours," Ianto said, fighting down everything he'd thought of, everything he could have said to that six-year-old he left behind. Indy didn't need that anymore. He'd grown up while Ianto wasn't looking, and Ianto had long since missed that chance. "Give my love to your dad, will you?"
"Yeah," Indy said, studying Ianto's face nearly as intently as Ianto was looking at his. "Yeah, of course."
Ianto nodded firmly, but before he could pull away, Indy said, "Love you, Dad, good night," turned, and bolted away across the Plass. He'd lost himself in the crowd before Ianto had even quite processed what he'd said. That had always been the last thing they said to Indiana when they put him to bed--love you, Indy, good night.
Ianto stared in the direction he'd gone. Indy had already vanished. By the end of tonight, even Jack wouldn't remember it had happened. Ianto would have to hold on to this alone. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and fixed it in his mind--love you, Dad, good night.
When he was sure he had it, Ianto started walking.
Ianto found Jack in the bathroom of his flat, replacing the lid on the toilet tank. He leaned in the doorframe and said nothing.
Jack shrugged. "I was just trying to guess your hiding places. You really don't have to be quite that careful with your porn, you know--and if you wanted to try--"
Ianto said firmly, "I have no idea what you're talking about, and furthermore that isn't mine, and I didn't buy it."
Jack raised his eyebrows, and Ianto knew perfectly well he was blushing (just like Indy, when Ianto hit upon that childhood crush--he'd had childhood crushes, and grown out of them, and gone time traveling just like his dad--like both his dads). Ianto just shook his head and stepped to the sink, opening the medicine cabinet and taking the green glass vial from the middle shelf.
"Oh," Jack said. "That's... that's practically cheating."
"I apparently have to cheat to thwart you for more than five minutes," Ianto said, brightening at the thought that he had apparently thwarted Jack for at least five minutes. Probably a personal best, there.
"Come on. You won't fall asleep, but you probably want to lie down for this."
Jack followed him, and took off his boots and braces and shirt before stretching out on Ianto's bed. "You're not going to make me beg before you explain to me what the hell just happened, right?"
"No," Ianto said. He'd taken off his own shoes and jacket and tie. "But this is traditional, actually. When you wanted to have a lie-in and your son wanted you to pay attention to him, you'd tell him stories in bed."
"Hmm," Jack said as Ianto settled beside him, laying down the vial on the night stand. "Are you going to tell me his name?"
"Yes," Ianto said, but first he pulled out his phone and sent a text.
Can you do better than tell me it happened? Can you show me?
"Really, your narrative style could use some work," Jack informed him, but the phone was already chiming for a received message. Martha had sent him a photo.
Ianto took a deep breath and opened the message, and there he was--Indy on his sixth birthday, looking up at something off to the right of the camera with an expression of pure wonder. Ianto stared for a moment, trying to make this his last memory of that year, Indy's smile, and not his body dangling limp and defeated in Jack's arms as he sobbed. Ianto shook his head, and passed the phone to Jack.
"This is our son, Indiana, as I last saw him."
Jack glanced from the screen to Ianto and then back; Ianto was tempted to count seconds while he didn't blink.
"Ianto Jones, Junior," Jack said finally. "Good name. Classic."
Ianto nodded, but Jack didn't look at him, squinting at the phone.
"Wait, Martha was--well, of course she was in on it, who else could have phoned the Doctor for you?"
"Yes," Ianto said. "Feel free to just infer the rest, if you like."
Jack set the phone down on Ianto's chest--much more gently than a mere piece of electronics deserved--and rolled onto his side. Propped on one elbow, he looked down at Ianto as he spoke. "You went to Martha when I sent you away for a holiday, and you told her about our kid, and you asked--"
Ianto raised his eyebrows.
"No, you're Ianto, of course you didn't ask. You just told her about it, but she called the Doctor, and the Doctor whisked you off to the future to see him."
Ianto nodded. "And then?"
Jack shook his head, lay down flat and curled himself around Ianto. "That part's the story. You tell me."
Ianto stared up at the ceiling, trying to find an order to tell it in, a single line through the tangle.
"I'm going to die," he said finally. "I don't know how much longer, now, but--I'm going to die, and you're going to wait almost two hundred years before you're ready to have him. And five years after he's born, I'm going to come back to you, and when you ask me to stay I will, for one year. The best year of my life."
Jack tightened an arm around him, kissing his throat just a little too hard--jealous of yourself, Ianto thought, but Jack had been right. No one else came close.
"Tell me about it," Jack said softly, and Ianto tried to think of what to tell, how he could possibly sum up that year.
"I got there on his fifth birthday," Ianto began, remembering his first dizzy glimpse of the garden, the taste of strange fruit juice. "That night you had a party, dozens of people, all these kids from Indy's school running around, and you introduced me to everyone there--sometimes just this is Ianto, sometimes this is my partner. For a few people you brought out co-parent--"
Jack sniggered against Ianto's shoulder, and Ianto grinned. "Yeah, you never quite explained to me who you were being rudest to, there--"
"Oh, co-parent, naturally," Jack said. "I'd probably slept with most of them."
Eventually Jack ran out of questions and Ianto ran out of stories he could bear to tell. Jack didn't ask him about leaving, and Ianto didn't volunteer.
Jack just sighed and rolled away to lie on his back. Ianto lay still and watched him, wondering what he was thinking. He tried to imagine what he'd be thinking himself, right now, if anyone had tried to tell him this story before it had happened--but Jack didn't seem to disbelieve him at all. None of the questions he'd asked had been that kind. This sort of thing happened to Jack, after all.
"It probably won't occur to you to ask me, even then," Jack said haltingly. "Though you could. It's rude to ask strangers, but once you have a child with someone, the biological particulars of their own family become fair game. By then I might forget that you don't know, that I didn't tell you when Gray..."
Ianto curled into Jack, resting his head on Jack's shoulder so Jack didn’t have to work so hard at avoiding his eyes. Jack's hand settled on Ianto's head, and when he went on the words seemed to come a little easier.
"I was my father's son--my father carried me, before I was born. He called me Circuit, like I told you. My mother carried Gray."
Ianto closed his eyes, turning his head to press his lips to Jack's skin, whatever was nearest.
"They never played favorites. I don't think they were even aware that they had favorites. They loved us--they were our parents, of course they did. But when my father was dead, and Gray was gone, because I--"
Ianto tightened his fingers against Jack's skin, digging in just enough to say stop that.
"My mother tried. She said she didn't blame me and she tried to be--but it made a difference, Ianto. It made a difference, and I remember when I carried my Circuit, I knew she wasn't mine and I knew I couldn't keep her, but I still..."
Ianto couldn't help himself; he was suddenly propped on one elbow, staring at Jack, who fell abruptly silent under Ianto's scrutiny. For an instant he just looked startled, and then his face shifted into a mask of indifference, anticipating exactly the answer he didn't want to the question he couldn't ask. The answer he feared.
Ianto shook his head, and then pushed up and moved to kneel over Jack, straddling his waist. He put his hands on Jack's shoulders and looked him in the eye.
"Jack Harkness," Ianto said, digging his fingers into Jack's skin, mostly because shaking him would be difficult in this position. "Or Circuit, or whatever your name ever was. I promise you, of all the ways you inevitably will warp and traumatize Indiana, not loving him enough is not one."
Jack still looked wary, and Ianto couldn't believe that merely saying it aloud wasn't enough for Jack to see how ludicrous that fear was--of all things to be afraid of, for Jack to fear not loving his own son--
But Jack didn't know, Ianto realized abruptly, remembering the moment Indy had met his eyes and recognized him, the first moment of contact in which Indy had suddenly and completely become a part of him. Jack wasn't there yet. He really had no way of knowing.
Ianto gentled his grip and raised one hand to Jack's face, running his thumb along the tense line of his jaw. "You're going to be a fine father. You're not going to let him down." Ianto groped for the phone and raised it to show Jack. "Martha could tell you the same--or the Doctor, if you like."
Jack flicked a brief longing look at the phone, but shook his head, seeming to relax. "I trust you."
Ianto would have argued the point--he could see Jack didn't entirely believe him--but there was nothing he could say that would change that, and it didn't matter if he could. Jack wouldn't remember. Ianto leaned in for a kiss, instead.
Jack's hand closed around Ianto's left wrist as Ianto lifted his head. He rubbed his thumb over the complicated knot of the bracelet, pressing it into Ianto's skin. "And you trust me."
Ianto nodded, and though Jack was looking at him, Ianto wasn't sure he saw.
"I'm going to let you down," Jack said.
Ianto sighed and knelt up again. "I'm going to die. Those two are not the same thing."
He leaned over to get the vial, and Jack's hand moved to his hip, steadying him and tangibly dropping the argument.
"I don't know how much of this you need," Ianto said as he straightened up, tilting the bottle to watch the liquid move. "You gave me this much in case I wanted to forget the whole year, and you said it was programmable--you just have to concentrate on the period of time you need to forget."
Jack shifted under Ianto, sitting up against the headboard and taking the vial carefully from his hand. "If it's--was programmable the exact word?"
Ianto nodded.
"Not purely chemical, then," Jack said, holding it up to the light and shaking it gently. "So it's not the quantity of the dose that matters, it's the activation of the memory."
Jack shook the vial again, then lowered it and met Ianto's eyes. "Which means this is one dose. If you give it to me now, you're not going to have any way to retcon yourself for a memory any distance in the past without wiping everything since. We just don't have this stuff yet."
Ianto shook his head. "There's nothing I want to forget."
Jack raised his eyebrow.
Ianto tried a smile. "Well, possibly that look you were giving Indy, but it hasn't killed me yet."
Jack shook his head, but it was only disbelief, not disagreement, and he didn't meet Ianto's eyes. He might almost be embarrassed. "Right. Then we just have to account for the lost time, so I don't start asking you about it later."
"Ah," Ianto said. "I could kill you. You lose time being dead--you probably wouldn't even notice how much."
Jack raised both eyebrows.
Ianto shrugged. "I'm good with bloodstains. It wouldn't be any bother."
Jack finally smiled. "You know, some people would take it the wrong way, that that was the first solution you offered."
"It wouldn't be a viable solution for some people," Ianto pointed out patiently. "Did you have something else in mind?"
"Pen and paper," Jack said.
Ianto leaned over again and opened the night stand drawer, rummaging for a moment before coming up with both.
"Efficient Ianto," Jack said, swapping the vial in his hand for the pen in Ianto's. "Hold still a second."
He propped the pad of paper against Ianto's chest and scribbled a brief note--Ianto tried to read it upside down, but Jack's handwriting defied quick comprehension; Ianto wasn't even positive he was writing in English. Jack tore the sheet off, folded it carefully, and slipped it into the right-hand pocket of his trousers.
"There," he said. "I have a policy of believing myself when I say I shouldn't ask any questions. Unless I'm lying, of course."
"Naturally." Jack would have countless ways of coding a message to himself. Ianto just had to trust that he wouldn't use any of them to do anything stupid.
Jack reached for Ianto's hand with both of his, tugging the vial free with unnecessary delicacy. He twisted off the top, raised it in a silent toast to Ianto, and knocked it back like a shot.
Ianto froze for a second--he wasn't ready, not yet, not when he was about to lose everything all over again, not when he had to guide Jack through a process neither of them entirely understood, and do it absolutely right the first time.
Jack made an odd face, and said, "You've never told me you liked marzipan."
Ianto stared at him.
"Tasted like marzipan. Not my favorite, and I meant it for you, therefore."
"We had it at Christmas," Ianto said. "The resort we went to for the holidays had these ridiculous marzipan decorations everywhere, and you teased me because I couldn't walk past the little reindeer without snapping off their antlers."
"Right," Jack said. "Naturally. So--what time did we hear the sound? From the sound to now, and everything in between. From down in the Hub to your bed. From..."
"Twelve minutes past five," Ianto supplied.
"To--" Jack consulted his watch. "Call it half past nine, to be safe. A TARDIS, a beautiful boy, a photograph, Indiana," Jack murmured. Ianto wondered if you could make a palindrome of that somehow.
He didn't ask. Jack was concentrating. Jack was carefully erasing everything, now, chanting Indiana under his breath like a prayer.
The word shortened, first, as Jack choked out, "Indy, Indy, Indy." Then he started slurring, and then he swayed forward, catching himself against Ianto and going silent.
Ianto lowered his mouth to Jack's ear and murmured, "--tell you something. I did slip something in your drink."
Jack snorted, his grip tightening to bruising-strength on Ianto's arms, and then relaxing only to tighten again. He would be dizzy, disorientated, and if the stuff had worked he'd just lost four hours between one breath and the next.
"I told you," Jack said, his words slow but perfectly distinct. "I saw. Obvious. You really ought to work on your sleight of hand before you need it for something important."
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, horribly glad that Jack couldn't seem to raise his head yet, so that he didn't have to look him in the eye. He kept his voice light. "Why should I, if you let me get away with it?"
Jack shook his head against Ianto's shoulder, tapping one finger sternly against Ianto's skin. "I know you, Jones. You do a thing well because that's the way you do things. Isn't like you to go around being sloppy just because you can."
Jack did look up, then, smirk firmly in place under faintly bloodshot eyes. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"
Ianto's breath caught, his eyes locked on Jack's. He couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't tell the lie Jack needed to carry on this play of something like normality. He saw the reflection of his hesitation in Jack's eyes, Jack's easy smirk becoming fixed. He couldn't allow it to falter.
Ianto shut his eyes and pressed his mouth to Jack's in a hasty, graceless kiss. Jack's lips parted to his readily and Ianto tasted the sweetness lingering on Jack's tongue and jerked back. Jack followed the motion, deepening the kiss, just as rough and fast and desperate as Ianto had been. Jack needed this more than Ianto did.
His hands tightened on Ianto's arms, and there was one of those dizzy, dislocated moments Ianto was nearly used to, with Jack--he'd never been with anybody else who could just move him like that--and then he was lying on his back with Jack above him. Ianto's thighs tightened automatically on Jack's hips, and Jack smiled down at him for an instant like a flash of lightning before he kissed Ianto again.
Jack's weight settled over him, Jack's hips grinding down just enough to make Ianto push up in response. Jack kissed him breathless, let up long enough for Ianto to gasp, and then kissed him again. Ianto was dizzy with it--with kisses, with oxygen deprivation, with Jack--by the time Jack shifted, dragging kisses down Ianto's throat as he unbuttoned Ianto's shirt. Jack kept moving, kissing and licking at every bit of skin he exposed. He knew just how to touch Ianto by now, every sensitive spot, and then his other hand was on Ianto's trousers, just fiddling with the zip. Ianto's hips jerked up, his cock stiffening, his breath short. He couldn't quite focus his eyes properly--the top of Jack's head was just a blur of brown through his eyelashes--but some still small voice in the back of his head was insisting that something was wrong.
Ianto bit down on his lip, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to think past the sensation of Jack's hands and Jack's mouth, and the way Jack had of making Ianto's own clothes into instruments of exquisite sensation when normally they were just clothes. Something was wrong--well, obviously something was wrong. Tonight was all wrong, he'd just retconned Jack, but--but they could--ha, they could forget that, couldn't they? For just a little while? Jack wanted to--Jack needed--Jack--
Ianto heard it then, Jack's voice in his head, his memory, reciting almost clinically, "You'll experience some disorientation, followed by a period of mild compulsive behavior. Usually the first thing subjects do is start tidying up..."
But Jack hadn't had anything to tidy up except Ianto, and now Jack was--Jack was compelled to--
Ianto's eyes flashed open, and he realized he was still staring at the top of Jack's head as Jack moved relentlessly down his body. He could feel himself reacting to the realization of what Jack was doing, like the proverbial bucket of cold water. He knew Jack could feel it too, but Jack wasn't deterred. He shifted his hand to Ianto's thigh, shifted his kisses higher again, falling back to some kind of sexual Plan B.
But he wasn't looking up, wasn't meeting Ianto's eyes, and Ianto had the sudden, disconcerting sensation that it really didn't matter who he was. Ianto could be anyone, he could be Jack's worst enemy, and Jack would still be doing this, because he had to. Because this was how Jack tidied up loose ends, because Jack was disorientated and covering for himself the best way he knew how.
Never, since that inopportune moment of panic the very first time, had Ianto actually wanted to get away from what Jack was doing. He couldn't even find words for a few seconds, and grabbed frantically at Jack's shoulder, pushing; it was only when Jack finally looked up at him, startled, that Ianto managed to say, "Jack. Stop."
Jack nodded, looking concerned--only concerned, like that first time when Ianto had panicked, like it was just Ianto he was worried about, nothing else. Only, even as he was looking at Ianto, his hand was still on Ianto's thigh, making idle little circles and passing higher each time. Like he couldn't stop, like he didn't even know he was doing it.
Ianto tried to breathe evenly, and held Jack's gaze. "Jack. There's a note in your pocket."
Jack's expression froze for a moment--his hand went tight on Ianto's thigh, fingers digging in painfully even through his trousers--and then Jack nodded fractionally, gentling his grip. "I know."
"You can read it, if you like. I can go." Jack's hands tightened, and Jack's weight shifted pointedly onto Ianto's legs. "Or--shut my eyes, whatever--"
Jack's hand was moving again--both of them, now, one tracing the line of his hipbone, the other sliding up his thigh--even as Jack shook his head. "It's where it should be. I don't need to know what it says."
Jack knew. Obviously Jack knew he couldn't remember how he'd got here. And now that Ianto had said something, Jack knew Ianto knew, and the illusion that it hadn't just happened was destroyed. But Jack had written himself a note--Jack knew where to expect a note--so this was just the sort of thing that happened to Jack.
It was probably just an occupational hazard, after a hundred-odd years with Torchwood: sometimes he wasn't going to know how he'd got here, and it might not even bother him much anymore. Ianto simply hadn't had time (would never have time) to become, or to learn to pretend to be, this utterly blithe about it.
Jack went entirely still, all of a sudden, as if he'd seen some part of that thought on Ianto's face. He got up all at once on his hands and knees, entirely out of contact, and said, "Wait, are you--did you have a note? Do you need me to read this one?"
Ianto shook his head, because he couldn't speak for a moment. Jack kept finding new and different and more disturbing ways to take his breath away. "I'm all right."
"Then I'm all right," Jack promised, sealing the words with a kiss, and there went his hand again, stealing its way across Ianto's skin. "I mean, unless you didn't bring me to bed to take advantage of me in an altered state, then I'm going to have to be disappointed in you."
"Well," Ianto murmured, "I do hate to disappoint."
But Jack looked up at him and smiled when he said it, looking at him like he saw him, like he was looking at Ianto in particular, so Ianto thought there was at least an outside chance that they really were all right. And a little after that, Ianto wasn't thinking much of anything at all, so it hardly mattered.
There was sunlight on his closed eyelids, Jack's familiar weight at his side, but the house was perfectly quiet--Indy must have spent the night at one of the other kids' houses. Ianto couldn't remember right away, though he felt pleasantly sore in the ways that suggested he and Jack hadn't been worried about being interrupted last night. He smiled and stretched without opening his eyes, and Jack's hand brushed his cheek.
He opened his eyes and experienced a moment of vertigo--nothing was where it should be except Jack, and it felt as if things were actually tilting and moving in Ianto's peripheral vision as the dream ebbed and reality leaked in. He blinked, squinting against the light, and Jack looked away, dropping his hand to Ianto's shoulder.
Cardiff, proper Cardiff, before it fell, long ago--now. The 21st century, his flat. His Jack, in daylight.
Ianto cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind. "You opened the blinds."
"I wanted to have a look at you," Jack said, but when Ianto looked at him Jack was still looking away, his hand resting--perfectly still--over Ianto's heart.
Ianto waited.
"I don't usually sleep much," Jack said. "Just enough to dream, most nights. And mostly it's nightmares. There's a lot of nightmare stuff in my head, I guess."
Ianto scooted a little closer to Jack, and Jack shifted his arm, putting it around Ianto without actually looking at him.
"Last night, though, I--I don't remember what I dreamed, just that it was a good one. I woke up and all I could think of was that everything's going to be okay. And then I remembered about last night, and I went and found the note--"
Jack's trousers, Ianto recalled, had made it halfway across the room.
"And it said..." Jack reached out and picked up the folded paper from the night stand, though he didn't bother to unfold it before he spoke. "It said, Don't worry. It was something nice for once."
It wasn't a question. Jack's voice held a quiet kind of wonder, nothing more. He set the paper back down, and finally looked Ianto in the eye. "So I just wanted to say, whatever it was..."
It occurred to Ianto suddenly that the photo was still on his phone. And then Jack smiled, and Ianto wasn't thinking of Indiana at all.
"Thank you, Ianto Jones."
part 8
Gwen lasted three days before she cornered him and asked him what was wrong.
Ianto frowned, giving her his best baffled look. He'd been doing really well, even pretending to take the bloody antibiotics till they were gone. He and Gwen had both been a little tense and tired for weeks now. Ianto was fooling Jack, or at least getting Jack to let him pass. Gwen shouldn't have noticed any difference.
"Every time Jack leaves the room, you relax," Gwen whispered. "Just a little. Ianto, is something--"
Ianto realized he was giving Gwen an actually baffled look, now. She was such a police officer sometimes.
"No, Gwen, it's all right," Ianto said slowly. "I just walked into a door, honestly."
Gwen's mouth went tight, and she gave him a filthy, furious look. "Ianto--"
"Fell down the stairs?"
"Ianto."
"It was my own fault, I burnt his dinner," Ianto tried.
Gwen's mouth twitched. "Ianto Jones, that is not funny."
"Don't laugh, then," Ianto advised, and turned back to checking the supply of coffee filters. "It's nothing, Gwen, just--well, what if you worked with Rhys every day?"
Gwen blew out a breath, and then muttered something that sounded very like, "Wouldn't be me falling down the stairs." But she squeezed Ianto's shoulder as she left.
He spent a little extra time sorting the coffee filters, practicing his smile. It really wasn't funny at all.
When the Daleks came--when Jack said he was sorry, said they were dead, when he included himself in that statement--Ianto thought that was going to be it, then. He was going to die. Gwen, too, probably. He felt worse for Gwen than himself. Perhaps he could find some way, sacrifice himself for her. That would be enough to make Jack remember him as brave, two hundred years from now, wouldn't it?
Jack would survive, of course, and he'd find some way to save the world. That was what Jack did, after all, and the Daleks wouldn't know to destroy one little bit of technology tucked away in the Hub, if they even could. Indiana--the fetus--didn't show a life sign, in stasis. There wouldn't be anything to exterminate, by their way of thinking.
Ianto had seen the future, seen it and touched it and worn its clothes and slept in its bed. He knew it would come out all right. It had to.
When Ianto saw the Doctor's face again--saw him smiling, despite everything, so pleased to see all his people--he knew everything would be all right. With the Doctor and Jack on the scene, things had to sort out for the best. Ianto remembered, suddenly, that the last thing the Doctor had done, before stepping back into the TARDIS, was to pull Ianto into a hug.
He'd been in shock at the time, or as good as, and had only stood there stiffly, head bowed. The Doctor had squeezed him close anyway, set one hand on the back of Ianto's head like he was an infant, a child to protect. They all were, as far as the Doctor was concerned. He wouldn't fail them, not even against the Daleks.
Jack left--promised to come back, of course, and Ianto gave him the smile he wanted, and would want to remember later--and that all seemed like part of the obvious progression of events. Jack had to be with the Doctor if he was going to survive with the Doctor, if he and the Doctor were going to save the world. And Ianto and Gwen would stay in the Hub, and--
And then Jack was gone, and the Daleks were descending, and Ianto thought of what the Doctor had said: the future is always yours to choose, but the consequences get dire.
It could all go wrong here--the future could change, could cease to be, and if the Daleks won, or just did enough damage in losing, then Indy's life would never play out, or never play out the way Ianto had seen it. The Daleks were threatening that, threatening not just Ianto's ordinary, difficult, crazed world, but also the safe, distant time where Jack had chosen to raise their son. They would all go down together.
So Ianto took the clip from Gwen's hand, and got ready to go down fighting. If there was anything he could do to help defeat those knobbly robot bastards, he'd be damned sure to do it.
But as it turned out, Tosh had already done it for them.
By the time he saw Jack again--with Martha in tow, as well as Mickey Smith, who looked around with the proprietary air of a man who intends to stay a while--Ianto had realized that that hadn't been his moment, and had settled down to wait for the next crisis.
He really hoped that Jack hadn't been planning to lie to Indiana when he said Ianto died bravely, that it hadn't been a random accident. He really, really hoped that it hadn't been, say, fatal electrocution while arguing with Mickey over how best to reroute the power cables to the sublevels until they cleaned up the Dalek damage, mainly because that would probably mean Mickey had been right.
As it turned out, Mickey was right, but no one got electrocuted. Ianto awarded himself partial credit for that.
Martha took him aside, during the first quiet moment after they'd all hugged and said hello--after he'd got back from saying hello to Jack in the semi-privacy of Jack's office--and said very softly that the Doctor said hello, and it had been good to see him looking well.
Martha wasn't just passing on greetings. Martha had helped the Doctor pry his son's fingers from his wrist, and she'd helped him erase the marks so Jack wouldn't know until he had to. Ianto looked her in the eye and knew she wasn't expecting him to tell her that he was fine, nor expecting him to break down and cry on her shoulder.
Ianto shrugged, and shaped his mouth into something not entirely unlike a smile. "In London, people used to say it wasn't how long you lived, it was how many things you survived to have nightmares about."
Martha nodded briefly, and gave him something a little bit like a smile back. "You've got a whole new set after today, then."
Ianto nodded.
"As long as you know there's someone who knows what's been waking you up at night," Martha said, and squeezed his hand. "If you ever need someone to tell you it really happened..."
She'd been to the end of the world with Jack, sometime last year when the world hadn't ended after all. She'd know a thing or two about wondering, as well.
Ianto nodded, and did not tell her he never wondered, never past the moment he touched his own wrist and felt the cord there. It was the thought that counted. "Thank you. And if you see him again, tell him thank you for me as well. I don't know whether I managed to--"
Martha rolled her eyes. "You got terrifyingly polite. Trust me, you thanked him. But I'll tell him again, if I see him before you do."
It took weeks for the rain to stop. The workstations in the Hub were all shrouded in plastic sheeting to protect the electronics from the water that found its way in everywhere, even after the weather had cleared outside and the worst of the damage had been repaired. The place was full of odd rattling and rustling and the constant tap-tapping of drips no one could trace back to a source. No one stayed later than they had to, and tonight everyone but Ianto--and Jack, of course--had managed to bugger off by tea time.
They'd all taken to playing music, or running white noise generators, to keep from going utterly mad. Odd noises were more common than not, and Ianto hardly noticed them. Still, something caught his ear--just for a moment, an odd noise that jumped out at him though he couldn't say what it sounded like, or even how long it lasted.
Ianto shook his head--the sound sent a shiver down his spine, and tickled at his ear like a gnat--and started checking monitors. It was an odder-than-odd noise; it might be something...
Jack appeared just as Ianto found the sound-and-energy signature.
"Did you hear something?" Jack said. "I thought I..."
Ianto pointed to the screen just as the system pulled up the closest historical matches to the peculiar signature. One from a few years ago; one from last spring, the day Jack disappeared.
"Those are the TARDIS," Jack said. "The Doctor. But this--"
Ianto nodded. "It's not a match. Not within the parameters of variation with the first two. So it's..."
"A TARDIS," Jack breathed. "Or something is wrong with the Doctor's, or--or something is very wrong."
Ianto nodded. It had been another Time Lord, when Jack had had that year no one else remembered--the Master, who had tortured Jack and the Doctor for that year. Jack said he was dead, but if one more Time Lord could show up, why not another?
On the other hand, what were the odds that the Doctor was the only surviving Time Lord who wasn't a homicidal maniac?
Ianto didn't say it aloud. That was well beyond asking what could possibly go wrong.
They criss-crossed the Plass together twice. "It ought to be here, somewhere," Jack said again. "The Rift is a fueling point, and the reading was in the same proximity."
"But if it's not the Doctor's TARDIS we may not be able to see it at all," Ianto repeated, taking up the second half of the argument that Jack had played out all by himself the first few times.
"Still," Jack said, stopping by the Water Tower to look around again. "Still. There ought to be something out of place, someone..."
Dusk was falling. There were people everywhere now that the weather had settled down, a few official vehicles parked, vendors here and there.
Ianto didn't bother looking. Instead he watched Jack searching for something he couldn't see. "But if it's got a working chameleon circuit, we won't be able to tell."
Jack sighed. "I'm going to go down and check the monitors again. You stay here, see if anything jumps out at you. I'll try to direct you if I can pinpoint the location better."
Ianto nodded, and set off in another random direction as Jack stepped onto the lift and disappeared.
It wasn't a sound this time, just a flash of color--bright blue, nearly the blue of the TARDIS--but of course it wasn't the TARDIS. All Ianto saw when he looked was a dark-haired young man in jeans and a bright blue t-shirt. There was no reason to think a TARDIS had to be blue, anyway; that was just the police-box shape.
Still, Ianto couldn't take his eyes off the man; there was something familiar about him, the way he moved. He was looking around as he walked--strolled, really. He was an obvious tourist, and like any tourist he stopped in mid-stride when something caught his eye, and changed direction randomly.
Ianto was still walking, tailing the man almost effortlessly. He was within five meters when the man abruptly changed direction again, showing Ianto his face. He looked more familiar, then, naggingly familiar. Ianto stopped walking, and his heart and his throat got it before he did, going so tight he couldn't move or breathe.
The man--the boy--got it faster, even though he wasn't looking. His gaze swept across Ianto and after a half-second's delay his face lit up, shocked and delighted. When he said, "Dad!" his voice was different, but Ianto still recognized his own name in his son's mouth.
Ianto barely had time to notice that Indiana was taller than he was now--he had to be nearly Ianto's own age, which was going to make his head hurt when he had time to think about it--before he was grabbed in a fierce hug. "Dad, Dad, that was--ha! That was way too easy."
Indiana was nearly laughing, giddy, and Ianto clutched at his t-shirt, trying to keep his balance--of course he recognized that shade of blue; half his hair had been that color once. It was his special DEAD t-shirt from Disaster Day. Indiana must have swiped it from the collection of clothes he'd left behind. Must have kept it for years, decades, to wear it now.
Ianto pushed back to look at him, blinking fast and trying to keep some kind of composure. "Indiana--is it still Indiana?"
Indy grinned. "Yeah, yeah--just about everyone calls me that, now. I couldn't stay Junior forever."
"No, you shouldn't," Ianto agreed, looking up at this happy young man, this man--his son--who'd come and found him. He looked him over again, and blurted, "Did you have to have the jeans lengthened?"
Indy laughed. "Yeah, an inch or two. Dad was right about eating my vegetables, I guess."
Ianto shook his head and finally managed to ask the question he ought to have asked first. "Indy, what are you doing here? How did you get here?"
"Oh." Indiana looked around, and Ianto wondered if his own face that transparent when he tried to keep a secret. It was strange, the multitude of faces he saw in Indy's face--his own, and Jack's, and that of the child he'd known--he'd stopped seeing Indy as a composite of inherited features almost at once, but now he shifted in and out of focus with every change of expression, like a kaleidoscope.
"I'm traveling with a friend," Indy said finally. "Dad says it's my gap year--does that mean anything to you? But we're here because she needed to refuel, and I wanted to see Cardiff--and you, if I could, safely. That's all. Just visiting."
"A friend," Ianto repeated neutrally, because apparently there was no going back once you'd turned into your father, and all he could hear was she.
The light was getting dodgy, but Ianto could swear Indy blushed a little. "Not that kind! No matter what horrifying crush I had on her when I was about ten years old. No. We're practically adopted cousins. The Doctor introduced us, of course. He started teaching us both Gallifreyan together when I was seven--my accent was always better," Indy added, a hint of a child's triumph bleeding through.
That was easier to picture, even with this adult Indiana before him--Ianto had seen him there on that last day, six years old and already getting his first lessons from the Doctor, aboard the TARDIS.
"You were all right, then," Ianto said cautiously.
Indy went serious all at once, teeth raking over his lower lip, and that expression Ianto recognized; it was so much like looking in a mirror that he had something like vertigo until Indy spoke. "Yeah, Dad, I--I was, really. I mean, I ran the fuck away from home on my seventh birthday when the Doctor showed up again, but--look, he brought me this."
Indy twisted, digging through a canvas messenger bag, and came up with a battered leather book, obviously much-read and much-loved. Ianto took it cautiously from his hand, flipping through the neatly-written pages without looking. His book, the one he'd written for Indy; the Doctor had been as good as his word.
Ianto turned to the last page. He'd never been able to remember what he wrote.
It took him a moment to decipher the unsteady scrawl.
Indiana,
Forgive me. I had to.
I am, always, everywhere,
Your dad who died.
Ianto avoided Indy's eyes as he handed the book back, looking idly around the Plass as he put it away. Indy had come to see him, wearing his clothes and carrying his book; asking whether he was forgiven after that would be rather pathetically superfluous.
"So," Indy said brightly. "Dad told me a story once about this restaurant near the--the Plass, isn't this? Right? And I think it's the same one you talked about in--"
"Ianto!"
Ianto froze, and saw Indy freeze. Jack's voice was bright, the scolding tone at least half joking--a stranger wouldn't hear the scold at all, but of course Indy wasn't a stranger.
Fuck.
He was coming from behind Ianto--Indy was staring over Ianto's shoulder with frozen fascination--and then Jack's hand was on his shoulder and Jack was saying warmly, "Are you going to intro--"
Ianto saw it on Indy's face--the freeze giving way to horror--and swung around to slap a hand unerringly over Jack's mouth. "Fuck, Jack, not a word, don't."
Jack jerked back--Ianto had, possibly, hit him kind of hard there--but Ianto kept his hand sealed over Jack's mouth. "Don't say it, don't even think it. As you value my sanity. Or yours. Or his."
Not that Jack had any idea whose sanity he was threatening, or why.
Indy, behind him, wasn't making a sound. Ianto dared a glance back to check that he was still breathing. He looked a little pale--the lights were coming on, now, they made everyone look sickly--but he was standing his ground, staring at Jack as if hypnotized.
Ianto looked back at Jack, who was staring just the same.
There was no way around it. If Jack didn't find out who Indy was now, he'd just keep thinking about it--of course he'd remember. He'd figure it out eventually, maybe sometime when Ianto wasn't there to know, to try to fix it. And this had to be fixed--if nothing else, Jack had been honestly shocked when Ianto appeared in the future. He hadn't known that Ianto would ever see their son. He couldn't know this had happened.
Thank God for retcon.
"Look at him," Ianto said softly. "Jack. His face. Look at him properly, and think."
Jack blinked a couple of times, and then turned his gaze on Ianto, eyes wide. Ianto let his hand down, but Jack didn't say anything right away, just looked quickly from Ianto to Indy and back. "He's--you're--our..."
Jack didn't know his name, Ianto realized. Jack hadn't named him yet.
Jack smiled again, bright and charming and rapidly regaining his equilibrium, but when Ianto looked back at Indy he was still looking a little horrified.
"Nice to meet you," Jack said, extending a hand, but Indy actually shifted his weight backward, eyes wide and staring, hands at his sides. "Are you okay? Is it me? Do I--oh, God, do I look that much different by the time you get here?"
Indy shook his head slowly, and finally spoke, his voice faint. "You've never done personal magnetism at me before--could you stop, please? It's freaking me out."
"Oh," Jack said, taken aback. "Sorry, yeah."
He looked away, shook himself from the shoulders, and then looked up again--but he was very nearly a different man, with different body language, a different smile.
He was halfway to being Indy's dad, and Ianto's breath caught in recognition. He'd never even understood that that was the difference, that he was seeing Jack when he belonged to someone he'd never had to charm.
"That better?"
But Indy was already grinning, grabbing his father in a hug, and Jack laughed and hugged him back. The synchrony with which they both reached for Ianto was better than a paternity test. Ianto let himself be folded in, an arm around each of them, until Indy pushed away.
"Is this--this is bad, though, isn't it? Dad's not supposed to--"
Jack looked quickly back and forth between them, because Indy was unmistakably addressing Ianto, and just as unmistakably referring to his dad in the third person. "Ianto? Wait, you know each other already. How--"
And then Jack caught his wrist, digging a thumb under his wristwatch to touch the bracelet he always wore there.
Ianto nodded to Indy. "I'll take care of it, but we'd better cut our visit short--Jack, there's nothing to worry about. The ship we saw belongs to a friend of the Doctor's. You need to come with me. You're not meant to know any of this."
Jack had his eyes on Indy, a last longing look. "The Hub? I've got--"
Ianto shook his head. "My flat, actually. I've got supplies you won't miss, after."
Jack nodded, then shifted his attention abruptly from Indy to Ianto. He let go of Ianto's wrist after a quick squeeze, and said, "I know the way. I assume you'll catch up."
Ianto wasted a few precious seconds watching Jack walk away, overwhelmed by him as he so often was. It was always just as startling.
Then he turned back to Indiana to say goodbye all over again, one more last time.
Indy was smiling, and Ianto couldn't honestly tell whether it was stiff upper lip or just blithe unconcern. Ianto had been dead for most of Indy's life, after all; getting to see him was a lark, and the end of the lark was just that. Still, Indy returned his hug with gratifying enthusiasm, and let Ianto tug him down to press a kiss to his forehead.
"Take care of yourself, and this girl-cousin-friend of yours," Ianto said, fighting down everything he'd thought of, everything he could have said to that six-year-old he left behind. Indy didn't need that anymore. He'd grown up while Ianto wasn't looking, and Ianto had long since missed that chance. "Give my love to your dad, will you?"
"Yeah," Indy said, studying Ianto's face nearly as intently as Ianto was looking at his. "Yeah, of course."
Ianto nodded firmly, but before he could pull away, Indy said, "Love you, Dad, good night," turned, and bolted away across the Plass. He'd lost himself in the crowd before Ianto had even quite processed what he'd said. That had always been the last thing they said to Indiana when they put him to bed--love you, Indy, good night.
Ianto stared in the direction he'd gone. Indy had already vanished. By the end of tonight, even Jack wouldn't remember it had happened. Ianto would have to hold on to this alone. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and fixed it in his mind--love you, Dad, good night.
When he was sure he had it, Ianto started walking.
Ianto found Jack in the bathroom of his flat, replacing the lid on the toilet tank. He leaned in the doorframe and said nothing.
Jack shrugged. "I was just trying to guess your hiding places. You really don't have to be quite that careful with your porn, you know--and if you wanted to try--"
Ianto said firmly, "I have no idea what you're talking about, and furthermore that isn't mine, and I didn't buy it."
Jack raised his eyebrows, and Ianto knew perfectly well he was blushing (just like Indy, when Ianto hit upon that childhood crush--he'd had childhood crushes, and grown out of them, and gone time traveling just like his dad--like both his dads). Ianto just shook his head and stepped to the sink, opening the medicine cabinet and taking the green glass vial from the middle shelf.
"Oh," Jack said. "That's... that's practically cheating."
"I apparently have to cheat to thwart you for more than five minutes," Ianto said, brightening at the thought that he had apparently thwarted Jack for at least five minutes. Probably a personal best, there.
"Come on. You won't fall asleep, but you probably want to lie down for this."
Jack followed him, and took off his boots and braces and shirt before stretching out on Ianto's bed. "You're not going to make me beg before you explain to me what the hell just happened, right?"
"No," Ianto said. He'd taken off his own shoes and jacket and tie. "But this is traditional, actually. When you wanted to have a lie-in and your son wanted you to pay attention to him, you'd tell him stories in bed."
"Hmm," Jack said as Ianto settled beside him, laying down the vial on the night stand. "Are you going to tell me his name?"
"Yes," Ianto said, but first he pulled out his phone and sent a text.
Can you do better than tell me it happened? Can you show me?
"Really, your narrative style could use some work," Jack informed him, but the phone was already chiming for a received message. Martha had sent him a photo.
Ianto took a deep breath and opened the message, and there he was--Indy on his sixth birthday, looking up at something off to the right of the camera with an expression of pure wonder. Ianto stared for a moment, trying to make this his last memory of that year, Indy's smile, and not his body dangling limp and defeated in Jack's arms as he sobbed. Ianto shook his head, and passed the phone to Jack.
"This is our son, Indiana, as I last saw him."
Jack glanced from the screen to Ianto and then back; Ianto was tempted to count seconds while he didn't blink.
"Ianto Jones, Junior," Jack said finally. "Good name. Classic."
Ianto nodded, but Jack didn't look at him, squinting at the phone.
"Wait, Martha was--well, of course she was in on it, who else could have phoned the Doctor for you?"
"Yes," Ianto said. "Feel free to just infer the rest, if you like."
Jack set the phone down on Ianto's chest--much more gently than a mere piece of electronics deserved--and rolled onto his side. Propped on one elbow, he looked down at Ianto as he spoke. "You went to Martha when I sent you away for a holiday, and you told her about our kid, and you asked--"
Ianto raised his eyebrows.
"No, you're Ianto, of course you didn't ask. You just told her about it, but she called the Doctor, and the Doctor whisked you off to the future to see him."
Ianto nodded. "And then?"
Jack shook his head, lay down flat and curled himself around Ianto. "That part's the story. You tell me."
Ianto stared up at the ceiling, trying to find an order to tell it in, a single line through the tangle.
"I'm going to die," he said finally. "I don't know how much longer, now, but--I'm going to die, and you're going to wait almost two hundred years before you're ready to have him. And five years after he's born, I'm going to come back to you, and when you ask me to stay I will, for one year. The best year of my life."
Jack tightened an arm around him, kissing his throat just a little too hard--jealous of yourself, Ianto thought, but Jack had been right. No one else came close.
"Tell me about it," Jack said softly, and Ianto tried to think of what to tell, how he could possibly sum up that year.
"I got there on his fifth birthday," Ianto began, remembering his first dizzy glimpse of the garden, the taste of strange fruit juice. "That night you had a party, dozens of people, all these kids from Indy's school running around, and you introduced me to everyone there--sometimes just this is Ianto, sometimes this is my partner. For a few people you brought out co-parent--"
Jack sniggered against Ianto's shoulder, and Ianto grinned. "Yeah, you never quite explained to me who you were being rudest to, there--"
"Oh, co-parent, naturally," Jack said. "I'd probably slept with most of them."
Eventually Jack ran out of questions and Ianto ran out of stories he could bear to tell. Jack didn't ask him about leaving, and Ianto didn't volunteer.
Jack just sighed and rolled away to lie on his back. Ianto lay still and watched him, wondering what he was thinking. He tried to imagine what he'd be thinking himself, right now, if anyone had tried to tell him this story before it had happened--but Jack didn't seem to disbelieve him at all. None of the questions he'd asked had been that kind. This sort of thing happened to Jack, after all.
"It probably won't occur to you to ask me, even then," Jack said haltingly. "Though you could. It's rude to ask strangers, but once you have a child with someone, the biological particulars of their own family become fair game. By then I might forget that you don't know, that I didn't tell you when Gray..."
Ianto curled into Jack, resting his head on Jack's shoulder so Jack didn’t have to work so hard at avoiding his eyes. Jack's hand settled on Ianto's head, and when he went on the words seemed to come a little easier.
"I was my father's son--my father carried me, before I was born. He called me Circuit, like I told you. My mother carried Gray."
Ianto closed his eyes, turning his head to press his lips to Jack's skin, whatever was nearest.
"They never played favorites. I don't think they were even aware that they had favorites. They loved us--they were our parents, of course they did. But when my father was dead, and Gray was gone, because I--"
Ianto tightened his fingers against Jack's skin, digging in just enough to say stop that.
"My mother tried. She said she didn't blame me and she tried to be--but it made a difference, Ianto. It made a difference, and I remember when I carried my Circuit, I knew she wasn't mine and I knew I couldn't keep her, but I still..."
Ianto couldn't help himself; he was suddenly propped on one elbow, staring at Jack, who fell abruptly silent under Ianto's scrutiny. For an instant he just looked startled, and then his face shifted into a mask of indifference, anticipating exactly the answer he didn't want to the question he couldn't ask. The answer he feared.
Ianto shook his head, and then pushed up and moved to kneel over Jack, straddling his waist. He put his hands on Jack's shoulders and looked him in the eye.
"Jack Harkness," Ianto said, digging his fingers into Jack's skin, mostly because shaking him would be difficult in this position. "Or Circuit, or whatever your name ever was. I promise you, of all the ways you inevitably will warp and traumatize Indiana, not loving him enough is not one."
Jack still looked wary, and Ianto couldn't believe that merely saying it aloud wasn't enough for Jack to see how ludicrous that fear was--of all things to be afraid of, for Jack to fear not loving his own son--
But Jack didn't know, Ianto realized abruptly, remembering the moment Indy had met his eyes and recognized him, the first moment of contact in which Indy had suddenly and completely become a part of him. Jack wasn't there yet. He really had no way of knowing.
Ianto gentled his grip and raised one hand to Jack's face, running his thumb along the tense line of his jaw. "You're going to be a fine father. You're not going to let him down." Ianto groped for the phone and raised it to show Jack. "Martha could tell you the same--or the Doctor, if you like."
Jack flicked a brief longing look at the phone, but shook his head, seeming to relax. "I trust you."
Ianto would have argued the point--he could see Jack didn't entirely believe him--but there was nothing he could say that would change that, and it didn't matter if he could. Jack wouldn't remember. Ianto leaned in for a kiss, instead.
Jack's hand closed around Ianto's left wrist as Ianto lifted his head. He rubbed his thumb over the complicated knot of the bracelet, pressing it into Ianto's skin. "And you trust me."
Ianto nodded, and though Jack was looking at him, Ianto wasn't sure he saw.
"I'm going to let you down," Jack said.
Ianto sighed and knelt up again. "I'm going to die. Those two are not the same thing."
He leaned over to get the vial, and Jack's hand moved to his hip, steadying him and tangibly dropping the argument.
"I don't know how much of this you need," Ianto said as he straightened up, tilting the bottle to watch the liquid move. "You gave me this much in case I wanted to forget the whole year, and you said it was programmable--you just have to concentrate on the period of time you need to forget."
Jack shifted under Ianto, sitting up against the headboard and taking the vial carefully from his hand. "If it's--was programmable the exact word?"
Ianto nodded.
"Not purely chemical, then," Jack said, holding it up to the light and shaking it gently. "So it's not the quantity of the dose that matters, it's the activation of the memory."
Jack shook the vial again, then lowered it and met Ianto's eyes. "Which means this is one dose. If you give it to me now, you're not going to have any way to retcon yourself for a memory any distance in the past without wiping everything since. We just don't have this stuff yet."
Ianto shook his head. "There's nothing I want to forget."
Jack raised his eyebrow.
Ianto tried a smile. "Well, possibly that look you were giving Indy, but it hasn't killed me yet."
Jack shook his head, but it was only disbelief, not disagreement, and he didn't meet Ianto's eyes. He might almost be embarrassed. "Right. Then we just have to account for the lost time, so I don't start asking you about it later."
"Ah," Ianto said. "I could kill you. You lose time being dead--you probably wouldn't even notice how much."
Jack raised both eyebrows.
Ianto shrugged. "I'm good with bloodstains. It wouldn't be any bother."
Jack finally smiled. "You know, some people would take it the wrong way, that that was the first solution you offered."
"It wouldn't be a viable solution for some people," Ianto pointed out patiently. "Did you have something else in mind?"
"Pen and paper," Jack said.
Ianto leaned over again and opened the night stand drawer, rummaging for a moment before coming up with both.
"Efficient Ianto," Jack said, swapping the vial in his hand for the pen in Ianto's. "Hold still a second."
He propped the pad of paper against Ianto's chest and scribbled a brief note--Ianto tried to read it upside down, but Jack's handwriting defied quick comprehension; Ianto wasn't even positive he was writing in English. Jack tore the sheet off, folded it carefully, and slipped it into the right-hand pocket of his trousers.
"There," he said. "I have a policy of believing myself when I say I shouldn't ask any questions. Unless I'm lying, of course."
"Naturally." Jack would have countless ways of coding a message to himself. Ianto just had to trust that he wouldn't use any of them to do anything stupid.
Jack reached for Ianto's hand with both of his, tugging the vial free with unnecessary delicacy. He twisted off the top, raised it in a silent toast to Ianto, and knocked it back like a shot.
Ianto froze for a second--he wasn't ready, not yet, not when he was about to lose everything all over again, not when he had to guide Jack through a process neither of them entirely understood, and do it absolutely right the first time.
Jack made an odd face, and said, "You've never told me you liked marzipan."
Ianto stared at him.
"Tasted like marzipan. Not my favorite, and I meant it for you, therefore."
"We had it at Christmas," Ianto said. "The resort we went to for the holidays had these ridiculous marzipan decorations everywhere, and you teased me because I couldn't walk past the little reindeer without snapping off their antlers."
"Right," Jack said. "Naturally. So--what time did we hear the sound? From the sound to now, and everything in between. From down in the Hub to your bed. From..."
"Twelve minutes past five," Ianto supplied.
"To--" Jack consulted his watch. "Call it half past nine, to be safe. A TARDIS, a beautiful boy, a photograph, Indiana," Jack murmured. Ianto wondered if you could make a palindrome of that somehow.
He didn't ask. Jack was concentrating. Jack was carefully erasing everything, now, chanting Indiana under his breath like a prayer.
The word shortened, first, as Jack choked out, "Indy, Indy, Indy." Then he started slurring, and then he swayed forward, catching himself against Ianto and going silent.
Ianto lowered his mouth to Jack's ear and murmured, "--tell you something. I did slip something in your drink."
Jack snorted, his grip tightening to bruising-strength on Ianto's arms, and then relaxing only to tighten again. He would be dizzy, disorientated, and if the stuff had worked he'd just lost four hours between one breath and the next.
"I told you," Jack said, his words slow but perfectly distinct. "I saw. Obvious. You really ought to work on your sleight of hand before you need it for something important."
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, horribly glad that Jack couldn't seem to raise his head yet, so that he didn't have to look him in the eye. He kept his voice light. "Why should I, if you let me get away with it?"
Jack shook his head against Ianto's shoulder, tapping one finger sternly against Ianto's skin. "I know you, Jones. You do a thing well because that's the way you do things. Isn't like you to go around being sloppy just because you can."
Jack did look up, then, smirk firmly in place under faintly bloodshot eyes. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"
Ianto's breath caught, his eyes locked on Jack's. He couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't tell the lie Jack needed to carry on this play of something like normality. He saw the reflection of his hesitation in Jack's eyes, Jack's easy smirk becoming fixed. He couldn't allow it to falter.
Ianto shut his eyes and pressed his mouth to Jack's in a hasty, graceless kiss. Jack's lips parted to his readily and Ianto tasted the sweetness lingering on Jack's tongue and jerked back. Jack followed the motion, deepening the kiss, just as rough and fast and desperate as Ianto had been. Jack needed this more than Ianto did.
His hands tightened on Ianto's arms, and there was one of those dizzy, dislocated moments Ianto was nearly used to, with Jack--he'd never been with anybody else who could just move him like that--and then he was lying on his back with Jack above him. Ianto's thighs tightened automatically on Jack's hips, and Jack smiled down at him for an instant like a flash of lightning before he kissed Ianto again.
Jack's weight settled over him, Jack's hips grinding down just enough to make Ianto push up in response. Jack kissed him breathless, let up long enough for Ianto to gasp, and then kissed him again. Ianto was dizzy with it--with kisses, with oxygen deprivation, with Jack--by the time Jack shifted, dragging kisses down Ianto's throat as he unbuttoned Ianto's shirt. Jack kept moving, kissing and licking at every bit of skin he exposed. He knew just how to touch Ianto by now, every sensitive spot, and then his other hand was on Ianto's trousers, just fiddling with the zip. Ianto's hips jerked up, his cock stiffening, his breath short. He couldn't quite focus his eyes properly--the top of Jack's head was just a blur of brown through his eyelashes--but some still small voice in the back of his head was insisting that something was wrong.
Ianto bit down on his lip, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to think past the sensation of Jack's hands and Jack's mouth, and the way Jack had of making Ianto's own clothes into instruments of exquisite sensation when normally they were just clothes. Something was wrong--well, obviously something was wrong. Tonight was all wrong, he'd just retconned Jack, but--but they could--ha, they could forget that, couldn't they? For just a little while? Jack wanted to--Jack needed--Jack--
Ianto heard it then, Jack's voice in his head, his memory, reciting almost clinically, "You'll experience some disorientation, followed by a period of mild compulsive behavior. Usually the first thing subjects do is start tidying up..."
But Jack hadn't had anything to tidy up except Ianto, and now Jack was--Jack was compelled to--
Ianto's eyes flashed open, and he realized he was still staring at the top of Jack's head as Jack moved relentlessly down his body. He could feel himself reacting to the realization of what Jack was doing, like the proverbial bucket of cold water. He knew Jack could feel it too, but Jack wasn't deterred. He shifted his hand to Ianto's thigh, shifted his kisses higher again, falling back to some kind of sexual Plan B.
But he wasn't looking up, wasn't meeting Ianto's eyes, and Ianto had the sudden, disconcerting sensation that it really didn't matter who he was. Ianto could be anyone, he could be Jack's worst enemy, and Jack would still be doing this, because he had to. Because this was how Jack tidied up loose ends, because Jack was disorientated and covering for himself the best way he knew how.
Never, since that inopportune moment of panic the very first time, had Ianto actually wanted to get away from what Jack was doing. He couldn't even find words for a few seconds, and grabbed frantically at Jack's shoulder, pushing; it was only when Jack finally looked up at him, startled, that Ianto managed to say, "Jack. Stop."
Jack nodded, looking concerned--only concerned, like that first time when Ianto had panicked, like it was just Ianto he was worried about, nothing else. Only, even as he was looking at Ianto, his hand was still on Ianto's thigh, making idle little circles and passing higher each time. Like he couldn't stop, like he didn't even know he was doing it.
Ianto tried to breathe evenly, and held Jack's gaze. "Jack. There's a note in your pocket."
Jack's expression froze for a moment--his hand went tight on Ianto's thigh, fingers digging in painfully even through his trousers--and then Jack nodded fractionally, gentling his grip. "I know."
"You can read it, if you like. I can go." Jack's hands tightened, and Jack's weight shifted pointedly onto Ianto's legs. "Or--shut my eyes, whatever--"
Jack's hand was moving again--both of them, now, one tracing the line of his hipbone, the other sliding up his thigh--even as Jack shook his head. "It's where it should be. I don't need to know what it says."
Jack knew. Obviously Jack knew he couldn't remember how he'd got here. And now that Ianto had said something, Jack knew Ianto knew, and the illusion that it hadn't just happened was destroyed. But Jack had written himself a note--Jack knew where to expect a note--so this was just the sort of thing that happened to Jack.
It was probably just an occupational hazard, after a hundred-odd years with Torchwood: sometimes he wasn't going to know how he'd got here, and it might not even bother him much anymore. Ianto simply hadn't had time (would never have time) to become, or to learn to pretend to be, this utterly blithe about it.
Jack went entirely still, all of a sudden, as if he'd seen some part of that thought on Ianto's face. He got up all at once on his hands and knees, entirely out of contact, and said, "Wait, are you--did you have a note? Do you need me to read this one?"
Ianto shook his head, because he couldn't speak for a moment. Jack kept finding new and different and more disturbing ways to take his breath away. "I'm all right."
"Then I'm all right," Jack promised, sealing the words with a kiss, and there went his hand again, stealing its way across Ianto's skin. "I mean, unless you didn't bring me to bed to take advantage of me in an altered state, then I'm going to have to be disappointed in you."
"Well," Ianto murmured, "I do hate to disappoint."
But Jack looked up at him and smiled when he said it, looking at him like he saw him, like he was looking at Ianto in particular, so Ianto thought there was at least an outside chance that they really were all right. And a little after that, Ianto wasn't thinking much of anything at all, so it hardly mattered.
There was sunlight on his closed eyelids, Jack's familiar weight at his side, but the house was perfectly quiet--Indy must have spent the night at one of the other kids' houses. Ianto couldn't remember right away, though he felt pleasantly sore in the ways that suggested he and Jack hadn't been worried about being interrupted last night. He smiled and stretched without opening his eyes, and Jack's hand brushed his cheek.
He opened his eyes and experienced a moment of vertigo--nothing was where it should be except Jack, and it felt as if things were actually tilting and moving in Ianto's peripheral vision as the dream ebbed and reality leaked in. He blinked, squinting against the light, and Jack looked away, dropping his hand to Ianto's shoulder.
Cardiff, proper Cardiff, before it fell, long ago--now. The 21st century, his flat. His Jack, in daylight.
Ianto cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind. "You opened the blinds."
"I wanted to have a look at you," Jack said, but when Ianto looked at him Jack was still looking away, his hand resting--perfectly still--over Ianto's heart.
Ianto waited.
"I don't usually sleep much," Jack said. "Just enough to dream, most nights. And mostly it's nightmares. There's a lot of nightmare stuff in my head, I guess."
Ianto scooted a little closer to Jack, and Jack shifted his arm, putting it around Ianto without actually looking at him.
"Last night, though, I--I don't remember what I dreamed, just that it was a good one. I woke up and all I could think of was that everything's going to be okay. And then I remembered about last night, and I went and found the note--"
Jack's trousers, Ianto recalled, had made it halfway across the room.
"And it said..." Jack reached out and picked up the folded paper from the night stand, though he didn't bother to unfold it before he spoke. "It said, Don't worry. It was something nice for once."
It wasn't a question. Jack's voice held a quiet kind of wonder, nothing more. He set the paper back down, and finally looked Ianto in the eye. "So I just wanted to say, whatever it was..."
It occurred to Ianto suddenly that the photo was still on his phone. And then Jack smiled, and Ianto wasn't thinking of Indiana at all.
"Thank you, Ianto Jones."
part 8