Hidden Identity- Chapter 12
Title: Hidden Identity- Chapter 12/13+ Epilogue
Author: Iantojjackh
Rating: PG
Summary: It began in a bar on a cold fusion cruiser with a stranger named Alonso. With the return of the 456, can this enemy be defeated once and for all?
Characters: Jack Harkness, Alonso Frame, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams, Rhiannon Davies, Ianto Jones, Tenth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor,
Spoilers: CoE compliant fix-it and The End of Time (DW)
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. I just borrowed them for a short spell. I wish I owned them so there wouldn't be the need to write fix-its like this.
Word Count: ~26k
Beta: timelordshines
Notes: this originally started off as a prompt from jo02 from the torchwood-fest member created fest way back earlier this year. After several starts and stops, I finally finished this.
Chapter 12
The three men exited the hotel and walked toward the bay, unaware of being watched by two women who wanted answers from Jack.
Ianto pulled the hood of his hoodie up to cover his face. It was his tiny way to rebel against the rules placed upon him, going out in public without his chip activated, but still hiding his face.
Gwen gasped in shock when she saw the third man, John Frobisher, looking chummy with Jack and his dear husband who seemed to be hiding. She wanted to believe that it was because he was embarrassed to be seen with a man who drugged a pregnant woman who happened to be the sister of a deceased lover. Those thoughts were banished when the couple held hands and Jack leaned in and gave his husband a quick kiss and he did not pull away. The couple instinctively leaned in toward one another and Jack was laughing at what was ever said to him by the hooded man.
The trio were out of earshot, but the body language did not look adversarial and it looked like Frobisher was enjoying the interactions between Jack and Alonso and it looked like he was joking with them. Yet, she noticed there was a distinct tension between them all.
"What the hell?" Gwen said, finally able to vocalise a fraction of what she was thinking.
"Who are those other two?" Alice asked. When she had finally tracked down the only other known survivor of Torchwood yesterday, Alice did not expect that Gwen had heard from her father and that he was back in Cardiff and Gwen was looking for him to deal with the 456.
"The one wearing the hoodie with his face covered is Alonso. He and Jack are married." Gwen narrowed her eyes as her gaze shifted toward the one person she hated more than Jack at the moment.
"Married?" Alice asked, surprised by the news. She had always heard her mother say that Jack took both male and female lovers, but it was the married part that shocked her most. It infuriated Alice that while everyone was left behind to pick up the pieces, he was off seducing someone and moving on. "Who's the other man?" Alice asked, sensing that Gwen was more upset about the older looking gentleman with them.
"John Frobisher, but he's dead. He killed his family and then himself. It's his fault, everything that happened with the 456 last time. He ordered the bomb to planted that blew up the Hub and he's the one who had you taken hostage. It's his fault Ianto is dead. Everything that happen a year and half ago is his fault." Gwen was so seething she did not care she repeated herself, but her rage made her lose track of the three men.
"Where'd they'd go?" Alice sounded annoyed that her father had disappeared. It was typical of him. When the going got tough, Jack got going.
"I think they went toward of the Pierhead Building." Gwen said as she looked in that direction, but they could have gone anywhere from there. For all she knew, the trio knew they were being followed and were misdirecting them on purpose. It had taken her four days to find the new hotel Jack was staying in, checking with every alias she knew Jack to use, but that had come up empty until she searched using the alias Ianto sometimes used. The arrogance of Jack astounded Gwen and she wondered if Jack's latest conquest knew where the name came from.
It was time Gwen fell back onto her roots and used good old fashioned police skills. Jack's coat was distinctive and it was the obvious thing to ask about and it did not take long to get on their trail again which lead them to an isolated area near the bay to a warehouse of sorts that was once used as an exhibition for an old BBC sci-fi series.
"You know we were being followed?" The Doctor pointed out as he led Jack and Ianto on a detour into the Pierhead Building.
"Gwen doesn't give up. Never did never will." Ianto looked back to see if she was still following and was relieved to see they were alone.
"Hopefully we confused her enough that she won't find us until everything is done." Jack knew their secret would be out if she did. The holographic chip in Ianto's neck would be fried if it was active while the construct wave was sent through them.
"Then let's get to the warehouse and get this over with. She is a tenacious one. There is another woman with her. A bit older. I didn't see her face, but I think they both want your blood, Jack. You have a way with women, don't you?" The Doctor said with a sarcastic smirk.
Jack shrugged, not wanting to get into it why Gwen was mad at him. He knew the Time Lord would not be happy they had to Retcon someone, who happened to be Ianto's sister, to cover up that someone saw Ianto alive.
They walked the rest of the way to the warehouse in tense silence interlaced with worry. The plan had to work or else there was nothing else they could do short of giving themselves over to the 456 for what no doubt would be an eternity of torture.
Jack's chest tightened the minute they stepped into the sparsely filled warehouse. It was almost the exact set up of Ashton Downs where he had killed Steven. The nightmare was about to be over. There was a disgusting smell that clung in the air that seemed to foretell the death that was to come.
"You just stand on the platform and I'll prepare everything. There are a still a few diagnostic tests I need to run." The Doctor gestured wildly toward where he needed Jack and Ianto to stand. There was no need to waste any time. The sooner this was done, the quicker this mess could be cleaned up and the blip of their return can be ironed out and fixed.
"Ready?" Jack asked, his stomach in a bundle of knots as he took his spot on the platform.
"Ready," Ianto replied, squeezing Jack's hand almost to the point of breaking it. "Are you sure?" Ianto knew this was stirring up memories of what happened with his grandson as the pain was written all over his face. "We can find another way of doing this..."
"No!" Jack quickly cut Ianto off. "We've got to put an end to this for good. They came back because of us. It's only right we put an end to them for good."
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Ianto asked sceptically of the Doctor. "They will be gone for good after this?" He had doubts about the plan working, but they had to at least try.
"Positive. Last time the main conduit was only a child. This time you two, full grown men, are being used. Not to mention two immortal men. The strength and range of the signal being sent back is a thousand fold stronger. It's going to kill any 456 within 5,876,345 light years give or take ten thousand light years." The Doctor said with all the assurance in the universe. Then the Time Lord's face twisted as he examined a readout on one of the screens. It changed everything they had planned for. "But if only one of you were to act as a conduit the range would be half that and you will destroy sixty five percent of the 456."
"Why would only one us do it? Both of us are all in for this." Jack wondered why this was being brought up now. They had agreed that for the plan to work both of them were needed.
"New information has come to light." The Time Lord looked sadly at Jack. He was sure that the other man had no idea what was going on inside if him. How could he break this kind of news to both of them?
"What kind of information?" Ianto asked annoyed as he glared disapprovingly at the Doctor.
"If Jack is to go through with this the foetus growing inside of him will die." There was no other way to break the news. "I'd understand if you decided to back down. Sixty five percent is a good portion of them to destroy and there is no reason to believe they will come back."
Neither man knew what to say. The news was a shock to say the least and neither was sure what to make of it. Having children was not something Jack and Ianto had discussed yet and now they were given a grim reality of what could happen if they chose their child over every other child on the planet.
Jack felt as if this was the Doctor's way of testing him. Any of the prior incarnations of the Doctor would not have shared this news with him until after the fact, but this one was giving him a choice. A position he had been put in before. A damning, impossible position. Surrendering themselves to the 456 was already ruled out as a solution.
"I'll give you both time to discuss what you want to do." The Doctor did not give either man time to argue and went to the far side of the room. This was not a decision to be made lightly or without a serious talk.
The couple looked blankly at each other for several minutes before they began to speak at the same time. "It's not worth the risk." They said in almost unison.
"Shit," Ianto rubbed his forehead. "I wasn't being serious when I said you were pregnant to Gwen last night. Did you know?" There was no hint of accusation in his voice, he was just curious if Jack was waiting for the right time to tell him.
"I had no idea." Jack sounded as surprised as he looked. He was also torn, but knew that this was the right thing to do because it was his and Ianto's return to Earth that brought the 456 back and sacrificing their child was penance for breaking the rules. "We have to end this once and for all." Despite Jack's assurance this was something that had to be done there was the obvious pain over what this choice meant. The one thing Jack never told anyone about his ability to get pregnant was that it was only possible one week every seven years.
"You're right." Ianto did not sound as convinced anymore. He knew how infrequent Jack's fertility period was from reading his expansive file. There was part of him that wondered if they would have another opportunity to have another child. Even though the subject of children had never been broached, in honesty it was never something that even crossed his mind until the Doctor mentioned the word foetus. "We can wait seven years." Ianto paused before he looked up at Jack. "That is if it's something you want too, when the time comes."
The words caught Jack off guard and his hand instinctively went for his stomach and protectively rested there. There had been countless times where he had sworn to never to do the whole pregnancy thing again, but this was Ianto and everything was always different with him. A very good different. He was the first...no...the only male lover that was not put off by his ability to get pregnant and there was his comment about waiting seven years. Ianto wanted children with him and in that moment he wanted to have Ianto's children as well. "We'll have a lot of time to practice making one until then and that's the best part." Jack turned on the flirting charm. It was his default defence mechanism to hide the pain. "What do you say we save this planet one last time?"
"Let's do it." Ianto said determinedly, but with a sad smile as he watched Jack's hand over his stomach. "One last sacrifice," he said soft as tears pricked the corner of his eyes and his left hand came to a rest on top of Jack's, their rings touching each other with their matching midnight black colour for all encompassing sadness.
"We're ready now, Doctor," Jack looked up, taking a deep breath before kissing Ianto for luck.
After the kiss broke, the couple rested their foreheads against one another, drawing on each other's strength. They knew they would never been able to get through this alone, but together they were unstoppable.
"All right," the Doctor said with an acknowledging nod as he went back to the console and began reading the program to activate the construct wave. "Whenever you are ready," he said with his hand on the enter key, waiting for the go ahead.
"We're ready."
"Let's get rid of these bastards."
Without any other fanfare the Doctor pushed the enter key and it was the beginning of the end for the 456.
The children of the world simultaneously stopped and began to scream in the same tone while in a warehouse in the far reaches of a Cardiff Bay, two immortal men screamed with them as their bodies twitched violently and eventually blood began to ooze from their ears, nose and mouths. After what seemed like an eternity to the doctor, it all stopped and Jack and Ianto collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Dead and still holding hands.
It was almost thirty minutes before Jack gasped back to life and saw the Doctor looking at him, face full of concern.
"I was beginning to worry. Maybe I should still be worried." Twelve had started to worry when the pair of immortals did not wake after ten minutes. He was not certain how the whole reviving thing worked and Ianto had yet to wake up.
Jack went into immediate panic mode when he saw Ianto was still dead. "How long was I out for?" He moved and placed his husband's head into his lap and gently slapped his cheek. "Time to wake up gorgeous." He looked up at the Doctor for an explanation, hoping he'd have answers why Ianto had not revived yet.
"Thirty minutes." The Time Lord said plaintively, wondering if he had miscalculated the strength of the wave and somehow drained the life force from the young man. "Just give it a few more minutes before we panic. I'm sure it will be fine."
Jack rolled his eyes at the comment that was something that one of the prior regenerations would have said to him. At the moment it did not feel like everything would be fine. "Hey, Ianto, it's time to wake up." Jack began to forcefully shake his partner, but Ianto remained cold and dead.
To be continued... Final Chapter 13
Previous Chapters
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11
Author: Iantojjackh
Rating: PG
Summary: It began in a bar on a cold fusion cruiser with a stranger named Alonso. With the return of the 456, can this enemy be defeated once and for all?
Characters: Jack Harkness, Alonso Frame, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams, Rhiannon Davies, Ianto Jones, Tenth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor,
Spoilers: CoE compliant fix-it and The End of Time (DW)
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. I just borrowed them for a short spell. I wish I owned them so there wouldn't be the need to write fix-its like this.
Word Count: ~26k
Beta: timelordshines
Notes: this originally started off as a prompt from jo02 from the torchwood-fest member created fest way back earlier this year. After several starts and stops, I finally finished this.
Chapter 12
The three men exited the hotel and walked toward the bay, unaware of being watched by two women who wanted answers from Jack.
Ianto pulled the hood of his hoodie up to cover his face. It was his tiny way to rebel against the rules placed upon him, going out in public without his chip activated, but still hiding his face.
Gwen gasped in shock when she saw the third man, John Frobisher, looking chummy with Jack and his dear husband who seemed to be hiding. She wanted to believe that it was because he was embarrassed to be seen with a man who drugged a pregnant woman who happened to be the sister of a deceased lover. Those thoughts were banished when the couple held hands and Jack leaned in and gave his husband a quick kiss and he did not pull away. The couple instinctively leaned in toward one another and Jack was laughing at what was ever said to him by the hooded man.
The trio were out of earshot, but the body language did not look adversarial and it looked like Frobisher was enjoying the interactions between Jack and Alonso and it looked like he was joking with them. Yet, she noticed there was a distinct tension between them all.
"What the hell?" Gwen said, finally able to vocalise a fraction of what she was thinking.
"Who are those other two?" Alice asked. When she had finally tracked down the only other known survivor of Torchwood yesterday, Alice did not expect that Gwen had heard from her father and that he was back in Cardiff and Gwen was looking for him to deal with the 456.
"The one wearing the hoodie with his face covered is Alonso. He and Jack are married." Gwen narrowed her eyes as her gaze shifted toward the one person she hated more than Jack at the moment.
"Married?" Alice asked, surprised by the news. She had always heard her mother say that Jack took both male and female lovers, but it was the married part that shocked her most. It infuriated Alice that while everyone was left behind to pick up the pieces, he was off seducing someone and moving on. "Who's the other man?" Alice asked, sensing that Gwen was more upset about the older looking gentleman with them.
"John Frobisher, but he's dead. He killed his family and then himself. It's his fault, everything that happened with the 456 last time. He ordered the bomb to planted that blew up the Hub and he's the one who had you taken hostage. It's his fault Ianto is dead. Everything that happen a year and half ago is his fault." Gwen was so seething she did not care she repeated herself, but her rage made her lose track of the three men.
"Where'd they'd go?" Alice sounded annoyed that her father had disappeared. It was typical of him. When the going got tough, Jack got going.
"I think they went toward of the Pierhead Building." Gwen said as she looked in that direction, but they could have gone anywhere from there. For all she knew, the trio knew they were being followed and were misdirecting them on purpose. It had taken her four days to find the new hotel Jack was staying in, checking with every alias she knew Jack to use, but that had come up empty until she searched using the alias Ianto sometimes used. The arrogance of Jack astounded Gwen and she wondered if Jack's latest conquest knew where the name came from.
It was time Gwen fell back onto her roots and used good old fashioned police skills. Jack's coat was distinctive and it was the obvious thing to ask about and it did not take long to get on their trail again which lead them to an isolated area near the bay to a warehouse of sorts that was once used as an exhibition for an old BBC sci-fi series.
"You know we were being followed?" The Doctor pointed out as he led Jack and Ianto on a detour into the Pierhead Building.
"Gwen doesn't give up. Never did never will." Ianto looked back to see if she was still following and was relieved to see they were alone.
"Hopefully we confused her enough that she won't find us until everything is done." Jack knew their secret would be out if she did. The holographic chip in Ianto's neck would be fried if it was active while the construct wave was sent through them.
"Then let's get to the warehouse and get this over with. She is a tenacious one. There is another woman with her. A bit older. I didn't see her face, but I think they both want your blood, Jack. You have a way with women, don't you?" The Doctor said with a sarcastic smirk.
Jack shrugged, not wanting to get into it why Gwen was mad at him. He knew the Time Lord would not be happy they had to Retcon someone, who happened to be Ianto's sister, to cover up that someone saw Ianto alive.
They walked the rest of the way to the warehouse in tense silence interlaced with worry. The plan had to work or else there was nothing else they could do short of giving themselves over to the 456 for what no doubt would be an eternity of torture.
Jack's chest tightened the minute they stepped into the sparsely filled warehouse. It was almost the exact set up of Ashton Downs where he had killed Steven. The nightmare was about to be over. There was a disgusting smell that clung in the air that seemed to foretell the death that was to come.
"You just stand on the platform and I'll prepare everything. There are a still a few diagnostic tests I need to run." The Doctor gestured wildly toward where he needed Jack and Ianto to stand. There was no need to waste any time. The sooner this was done, the quicker this mess could be cleaned up and the blip of their return can be ironed out and fixed.
"Ready?" Jack asked, his stomach in a bundle of knots as he took his spot on the platform.
"Ready," Ianto replied, squeezing Jack's hand almost to the point of breaking it. "Are you sure?" Ianto knew this was stirring up memories of what happened with his grandson as the pain was written all over his face. "We can find another way of doing this..."
"No!" Jack quickly cut Ianto off. "We've got to put an end to this for good. They came back because of us. It's only right we put an end to them for good."
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Ianto asked sceptically of the Doctor. "They will be gone for good after this?" He had doubts about the plan working, but they had to at least try.
"Positive. Last time the main conduit was only a child. This time you two, full grown men, are being used. Not to mention two immortal men. The strength and range of the signal being sent back is a thousand fold stronger. It's going to kill any 456 within 5,876,345 light years give or take ten thousand light years." The Doctor said with all the assurance in the universe. Then the Time Lord's face twisted as he examined a readout on one of the screens. It changed everything they had planned for. "But if only one of you were to act as a conduit the range would be half that and you will destroy sixty five percent of the 456."
"Why would only one us do it? Both of us are all in for this." Jack wondered why this was being brought up now. They had agreed that for the plan to work both of them were needed.
"New information has come to light." The Time Lord looked sadly at Jack. He was sure that the other man had no idea what was going on inside if him. How could he break this kind of news to both of them?
"What kind of information?" Ianto asked annoyed as he glared disapprovingly at the Doctor.
"If Jack is to go through with this the foetus growing inside of him will die." There was no other way to break the news. "I'd understand if you decided to back down. Sixty five percent is a good portion of them to destroy and there is no reason to believe they will come back."
Neither man knew what to say. The news was a shock to say the least and neither was sure what to make of it. Having children was not something Jack and Ianto had discussed yet and now they were given a grim reality of what could happen if they chose their child over every other child on the planet.
Jack felt as if this was the Doctor's way of testing him. Any of the prior incarnations of the Doctor would not have shared this news with him until after the fact, but this one was giving him a choice. A position he had been put in before. A damning, impossible position. Surrendering themselves to the 456 was already ruled out as a solution.
"I'll give you both time to discuss what you want to do." The Doctor did not give either man time to argue and went to the far side of the room. This was not a decision to be made lightly or without a serious talk.
The couple looked blankly at each other for several minutes before they began to speak at the same time. "It's not worth the risk." They said in almost unison.
"Shit," Ianto rubbed his forehead. "I wasn't being serious when I said you were pregnant to Gwen last night. Did you know?" There was no hint of accusation in his voice, he was just curious if Jack was waiting for the right time to tell him.
"I had no idea." Jack sounded as surprised as he looked. He was also torn, but knew that this was the right thing to do because it was his and Ianto's return to Earth that brought the 456 back and sacrificing their child was penance for breaking the rules. "We have to end this once and for all." Despite Jack's assurance this was something that had to be done there was the obvious pain over what this choice meant. The one thing Jack never told anyone about his ability to get pregnant was that it was only possible one week every seven years.
"You're right." Ianto did not sound as convinced anymore. He knew how infrequent Jack's fertility period was from reading his expansive file. There was part of him that wondered if they would have another opportunity to have another child. Even though the subject of children had never been broached, in honesty it was never something that even crossed his mind until the Doctor mentioned the word foetus. "We can wait seven years." Ianto paused before he looked up at Jack. "That is if it's something you want too, when the time comes."
The words caught Jack off guard and his hand instinctively went for his stomach and protectively rested there. There had been countless times where he had sworn to never to do the whole pregnancy thing again, but this was Ianto and everything was always different with him. A very good different. He was the first...no...the only male lover that was not put off by his ability to get pregnant and there was his comment about waiting seven years. Ianto wanted children with him and in that moment he wanted to have Ianto's children as well. "We'll have a lot of time to practice making one until then and that's the best part." Jack turned on the flirting charm. It was his default defence mechanism to hide the pain. "What do you say we save this planet one last time?"
"Let's do it." Ianto said determinedly, but with a sad smile as he watched Jack's hand over his stomach. "One last sacrifice," he said soft as tears pricked the corner of his eyes and his left hand came to a rest on top of Jack's, their rings touching each other with their matching midnight black colour for all encompassing sadness.
"We're ready now, Doctor," Jack looked up, taking a deep breath before kissing Ianto for luck.
After the kiss broke, the couple rested their foreheads against one another, drawing on each other's strength. They knew they would never been able to get through this alone, but together they were unstoppable.
"All right," the Doctor said with an acknowledging nod as he went back to the console and began reading the program to activate the construct wave. "Whenever you are ready," he said with his hand on the enter key, waiting for the go ahead.
"We're ready."
"Let's get rid of these bastards."
Without any other fanfare the Doctor pushed the enter key and it was the beginning of the end for the 456.
The children of the world simultaneously stopped and began to scream in the same tone while in a warehouse in the far reaches of a Cardiff Bay, two immortal men screamed with them as their bodies twitched violently and eventually blood began to ooze from their ears, nose and mouths. After what seemed like an eternity to the doctor, it all stopped and Jack and Ianto collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Dead and still holding hands.
It was almost thirty minutes before Jack gasped back to life and saw the Doctor looking at him, face full of concern.
"I was beginning to worry. Maybe I should still be worried." Twelve had started to worry when the pair of immortals did not wake after ten minutes. He was not certain how the whole reviving thing worked and Ianto had yet to wake up.
Jack went into immediate panic mode when he saw Ianto was still dead. "How long was I out for?" He moved and placed his husband's head into his lap and gently slapped his cheek. "Time to wake up gorgeous." He looked up at the Doctor for an explanation, hoping he'd have answers why Ianto had not revived yet.
"Thirty minutes." The Time Lord said plaintively, wondering if he had miscalculated the strength of the wave and somehow drained the life force from the young man. "Just give it a few more minutes before we panic. I'm sure it will be fine."
Jack rolled his eyes at the comment that was something that one of the prior regenerations would have said to him. At the moment it did not feel like everything would be fine. "Hey, Ianto, it's time to wake up." Jack began to forcefully shake his partner, but Ianto remained cold and dead.
To be continued... Final Chapter 13
Previous Chapters
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11