It'll End in Tears #25: "Nadir and Zenith, Stumbling"
Title: "Nadir and Zenith, Stumbling"
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This installment is in the PG-13 range, mostly for language.
Notes/Summary: Part #25 of the " It'll End In Tears" cluster, and #22 on the table. Thanks to sanginmychains for giving this the sweet and obscenely fast beta-fu.
Spoilers/Canon Alert: Contains scenes/lines from 2x04 - "Meat"
Andy ignores Gwen’s calls for a week and a half before they stop.
Before all of this Andy would have jumped to answer her. He’d have gone anywhere and done anything she asked. Now? She’s an unwelcome reminder that he has done something shameful. Probably more than one thing. Maybe lots of things.
The pale band of flesh on his wrist is fading. Work is slowly easing back towards normalcy. His outside life, too. He goes out for kebabs and drinks and mayhem with Trav. He calls his parents. He goes running. Gwen, though? Gwen doesn’t fade with exposure to sunlight.
When the wedding invite arrives in his post, Andy spends three whole days wanting to tear it to shreds. He doesn’t, of course. He just stares at it and touches it and then drops it back on his counter before finally RSVP-ing for one. He’ll go because Gwen wants him to, and no matter how much it hurts him to look at her with Rhys, and no matter how angry he still is, or how afraid, he has to answer her. It just takes him a little longer.
Because of you I hate myself for being broken.
As for the rest of it, he pretends. He begs himself - Just let it go, Andy. Everyone else is - but his mind never stops working. He has to cram his notebook in the kitchen drawer some nights. It’s perverse, and a violation of his nature, but every whiff of those three months hurts. More and more, he knows that something is lurking in that gap. His dreams are incoherent, and he forgets them, but he wakes up wild and confused anyway.
In the mornings he stares at himself in the mirror and tries on thoughts that are not his own, just to see what they feel like. Just in case they’re true.
More than anything, he wants to force the puzzle back into its box. Some days he’s desperate to forget because somehow he thinks maybe his life depends on it. When he thinks about that too long, he wants to vomit.
I promised you I’d let you live.
It makes his mouth go all sour, like he’s been chewing aspirin, which is how he wakes up one morning scared to death of pills. He quits taking his vitamins and buys some stuff he can mix up in his bottled water instead. It’s a good thing he’s not on any medications, because he can’t imagine trying to explain this to a chemist.
Some days, it’s all little flashes and sideways ideas and he can’t bloody focus.
The final straw comes one day as he’s crossing Roald Dahl Plass on his lunch hour. The sun is out and the sky is nearly entirely clear, and out of nowhere he’s struck with such a profound sense of déjà vu that his legs go out from under him. He feels as if every landmark, every brick and piece of slate, every drop of water is superimposed on itself.
Somehow, Trav - who doesn’t belong, because there’s only one of him - manages to get him into a car and drives him to the A&E, where they give him glucose and saline. They send him home for the rest of the day “just in case” even though there’s nothing wrong with him. “Sudden dip in blood pressure probably,” the doctor says, and claps him on the shoulder.
Which is how he finds himself sitting in the middle of his floor staring at a patch of carpet that he knows should be stained candy pink, but isn’t. It’s the first clear memory in ages, though he’s got no context. He just knows that this spot is wrong.
Then again, so is everything these days.
# # #
Normalcy, Ianto has learned, is a relative thing. He can hardly imagine what his boyhood self would make of him spending a couple of hours overseeing the disposal of what can only be described as a giant space manatee. In Merthyr, of all places. Following it up by returning to an underground base in Cardiff is almost a letdown.
Then again, he thinks, if Viagra and the Mosquitotone can come out of Merthyr, why not alien meat?
He enters the Hub through the cog door to find it nearly empty save for Toshiko, who is busily editing various police reports.
“I’d have got to that, you know,” he chides, but it’s more friendly ribbing than anything else.
“You were busy,” she answers. “And anyway, the fewer people who have an opportunity to see the originals, the better, right?”
“I suppose so. How’s Rhys?” There are sounds coming from the medical pit, but nothing decipherable.
Tosh steps down onto the concrete and nods toward the archway. “Come see for yourself.”
Rhys is laid out on the gurney, and Ianto’s stomach does a little flip in spite of the fact that everyone looks much, much happier than tense. Rhys looks to be on the edge of coming to.
Perfect timing, Jack mouths to him as he and Tosh enter.
Ianto taps the pocket where he keeps Jack’s stopwatch and gives him a knowing smile before resting his forearms on the rail.
“Here he is,” Owen says as Rhys squirms, then hisses pain.
Tosh smiles. “Hero of the hour.”
Below them, in the pit, Gwen and Rhys kiss and speak softly to one another. It’s rather sweet, he thinks, as aftermaths go, even when Rhys manages to move just wrong and ends up wincing.
“Next time,” Ianto tells him, “let her take the bullet.”
Rhys looks Gwen in the eyes. “Never.” When he speaks again, he’s still looking at her as if he can’t tear his eyes away. “What happened to the blokes?”
Jack shrugs a little. “We gave them amnesia pills. They'll remember who they are but not what they did over the past few months.”
“So they got away with it?”
“It would never stand up in a court of law,” Jack explains.
“And the creature?”
“Incinerated.”
Owen flinches. Tosh lowers her head.
“So there's nothing left. It was never there.” There’s disappointment in Rhys’ voice, Ianto thinks. He’s not accustomed to being heroic in secret. Then again, it’s likely Rhys has never been properly heroic in his life.
“Gwen,” Jack says, only just missing a beat as he steps back and makes to leave. “I need a word.”
She’s barely up the stairs before Owen is helping Rhys up and into his clothes. “I’ve given you a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Gwen’s got instructions on how to help you with the wound. And trust me, you’ll need a bit of a hand with it initially. Take it from someone who knows.” His eyes flit up to Ianto.
The look Owen gives him is almost - almost - friendly. Ianto nods respect in return, and excuses himself to the Hub to finish up the logistics and maybe sort out some drinks. It’s been quite a day, it’s likely to be a long evening, and if he can power through the next few hours without going mad, maybe he’ll find a way to ask Jack to take care of him while he makes sense of the fact that he’s still alive after having a man pull the trigger on him with murderous intent. Right now, though, what he needs is something a fair bit stronger than coffee.
# # #
“I’m not doing it. I won't drug him.”
The words echo through the Hub before the entry alarm stops declaring Gwen’s re-entry, and Jack can’t help but wonder why it’s too much to ask that someone on his team follows a damn order once in a while.
“You have to,” Tosh tells her, and Owen backs her up (“You can’t allow him to remember.”), but it’s Ianto’s voice that Jack hears over his shoulder.
“It's the rules.”
Jack doesn’t miss the unspoken plea in Ianto’s voice but it’s been a bastard of a day and Gwen seems intent on having this ugly, stupid moment right this very minute, in front of everybody. Worse, she looks like she wants to drag everyone else into it.
“But none of you have any partners outside of this!”
He needs to shut this down, and shut it down now. “But we understand how you feel,” Jack says in an effort to appease her. If he can calm her down -
“No, you don't. No, you don't, Jack! You all think it's cold and lonely out there. But it isn’t for me because I have him. He matters. And I've lied to him for long enough. What he did today was so brave.” She eyes them all, now, like she’s trying to bring them over to her side. “Braver than any of us because we signed up for this. But he didn't! He did it because he loves me, and I won't take that away from him! I won't! And if that means I have to quit or you Retcon me or whatever, then fine, fine.”
Jack tosses Ianto his water with a certainty that proclaims his willingness to handle this, and then puts himself as aggressively as he dares into Gwen’s space. He stands close enough that he’s sure she can feel the rage radiating off of him. “You really think you could go back to your old life before Torchwood?” It’s not a question. It’s a challenge.
She raises her chin in defiance. “I wouldn't know anything different.”
“I would.”
He should not be stunned by the way Gwen’s boldness outstrips her uncertainty. Of course it does. It’s why he hired her, isn’t it? And really, this isn’t the first time she’s chosen Rhys over him. Gwen would - and has - tried to sacrifice the world for Rhys.
At least this time Jack can be grateful that none of his team seems to feel the urge to shoot him over it. Yet.
“Give Rhys my love and I will see you tomorrow,” he growls in a tone that he hopes belies the way he’s lost this particular battle. Judging by the look on Toshiko’s face, though, his failure is all too clear. He takes his water back from Ianto and slinks back into his office feeling uncomfortably like a whipped dog. Out of childish spite, he turns on the CCTV just in time to watch Gwen’s allegiances declare themselves once more. She isn’t even doing it for his benefit any longer, though it’s possible she chose that spot to prove a point.
Through the glass behind him, Jack hears the gentle patter of keystrokes resume.
Jack would sit like this forever, staring at an empty screen except that suddenly Ianto is at his desk with a second tumbler, pouring a pair of whiskies instead of just refreshing his own. When Ianto holds one out, Jack narrows his eyes, uncertain.
“Go on. Take it.”
He does as he’s told. After a moment’s hesitation, he downs it in one. Ianto refills it.
“She led us for a year,” Ianto intones a little distantly. “If you were still hoping for your power struggle, I think that may have been it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Ah.” Ianto takes a sip of his drink and settles himself on the edge of Jack’s desk. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think this constitutes a coup.”
Jack raises his eyebrows. “Oh? And what would you call it?”
Ianto contemplates his glass. “I would say that it’s been a long time in coming and that Gwen is a vital member of the team. If anyone were to receive special consideration under the circumstances, it should be her and Rhys.”
“But?”
“But nothing,” Ianto says, firmer now. “That wasn’t a leading statement, Jack. Gwen’s choice doesn’t change things. What’s done is done. Today’s events are a curiosity, not a sea change.”
“You sound awfully certain of that.”
“Some certainties are awful.” Ianto swallows down the rest of his whisky, and lets his glass land on the wood of Jack’s desk with a heavy thunk. “I’ll be in the archives. Call me when the others leave.”
“Yeah,” Jack replies and watches as Ianto leaves his office looking far older than he has any right to. He finishes his drink in his own time, and idly watches the strangers pass on his screen.
Prev (Pt #24) (Warnings: language)
-
Next (Pt #26) (Warnings: language)
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This installment is in the PG-13 range, mostly for language.
Notes/Summary: Part #25 of the " It'll End In Tears" cluster, and #22 on the table. Thanks to sanginmychains for giving this the sweet and obscenely fast beta-fu.
Spoilers/Canon Alert: Contains scenes/lines from 2x04 - "Meat"
Andy ignores Gwen’s calls for a week and a half before they stop.
Before all of this Andy would have jumped to answer her. He’d have gone anywhere and done anything she asked. Now? She’s an unwelcome reminder that he has done something shameful. Probably more than one thing. Maybe lots of things.
The pale band of flesh on his wrist is fading. Work is slowly easing back towards normalcy. His outside life, too. He goes out for kebabs and drinks and mayhem with Trav. He calls his parents. He goes running. Gwen, though? Gwen doesn’t fade with exposure to sunlight.
When the wedding invite arrives in his post, Andy spends three whole days wanting to tear it to shreds. He doesn’t, of course. He just stares at it and touches it and then drops it back on his counter before finally RSVP-ing for one. He’ll go because Gwen wants him to, and no matter how much it hurts him to look at her with Rhys, and no matter how angry he still is, or how afraid, he has to answer her. It just takes him a little longer.
Because of you I hate myself for being broken.
As for the rest of it, he pretends. He begs himself - Just let it go, Andy. Everyone else is - but his mind never stops working. He has to cram his notebook in the kitchen drawer some nights. It’s perverse, and a violation of his nature, but every whiff of those three months hurts. More and more, he knows that something is lurking in that gap. His dreams are incoherent, and he forgets them, but he wakes up wild and confused anyway.
In the mornings he stares at himself in the mirror and tries on thoughts that are not his own, just to see what they feel like. Just in case they’re true.
More than anything, he wants to force the puzzle back into its box. Some days he’s desperate to forget because somehow he thinks maybe his life depends on it. When he thinks about that too long, he wants to vomit.
I promised you I’d let you live.
It makes his mouth go all sour, like he’s been chewing aspirin, which is how he wakes up one morning scared to death of pills. He quits taking his vitamins and buys some stuff he can mix up in his bottled water instead. It’s a good thing he’s not on any medications, because he can’t imagine trying to explain this to a chemist.
Some days, it’s all little flashes and sideways ideas and he can’t bloody focus.
The final straw comes one day as he’s crossing Roald Dahl Plass on his lunch hour. The sun is out and the sky is nearly entirely clear, and out of nowhere he’s struck with such a profound sense of déjà vu that his legs go out from under him. He feels as if every landmark, every brick and piece of slate, every drop of water is superimposed on itself.
Somehow, Trav - who doesn’t belong, because there’s only one of him - manages to get him into a car and drives him to the A&E, where they give him glucose and saline. They send him home for the rest of the day “just in case” even though there’s nothing wrong with him. “Sudden dip in blood pressure probably,” the doctor says, and claps him on the shoulder.
Which is how he finds himself sitting in the middle of his floor staring at a patch of carpet that he knows should be stained candy pink, but isn’t. It’s the first clear memory in ages, though he’s got no context. He just knows that this spot is wrong.
Then again, so is everything these days.
# # #
Normalcy, Ianto has learned, is a relative thing. He can hardly imagine what his boyhood self would make of him spending a couple of hours overseeing the disposal of what can only be described as a giant space manatee. In Merthyr, of all places. Following it up by returning to an underground base in Cardiff is almost a letdown.
Then again, he thinks, if Viagra and the Mosquitotone can come out of Merthyr, why not alien meat?
He enters the Hub through the cog door to find it nearly empty save for Toshiko, who is busily editing various police reports.
“I’d have got to that, you know,” he chides, but it’s more friendly ribbing than anything else.
“You were busy,” she answers. “And anyway, the fewer people who have an opportunity to see the originals, the better, right?”
“I suppose so. How’s Rhys?” There are sounds coming from the medical pit, but nothing decipherable.
Tosh steps down onto the concrete and nods toward the archway. “Come see for yourself.”
Rhys is laid out on the gurney, and Ianto’s stomach does a little flip in spite of the fact that everyone looks much, much happier than tense. Rhys looks to be on the edge of coming to.
Perfect timing, Jack mouths to him as he and Tosh enter.
Ianto taps the pocket where he keeps Jack’s stopwatch and gives him a knowing smile before resting his forearms on the rail.
“Here he is,” Owen says as Rhys squirms, then hisses pain.
Tosh smiles. “Hero of the hour.”
Below them, in the pit, Gwen and Rhys kiss and speak softly to one another. It’s rather sweet, he thinks, as aftermaths go, even when Rhys manages to move just wrong and ends up wincing.
“Next time,” Ianto tells him, “let her take the bullet.”
Rhys looks Gwen in the eyes. “Never.” When he speaks again, he’s still looking at her as if he can’t tear his eyes away. “What happened to the blokes?”
Jack shrugs a little. “We gave them amnesia pills. They'll remember who they are but not what they did over the past few months.”
“So they got away with it?”
“It would never stand up in a court of law,” Jack explains.
“And the creature?”
“Incinerated.”
Owen flinches. Tosh lowers her head.
“So there's nothing left. It was never there.” There’s disappointment in Rhys’ voice, Ianto thinks. He’s not accustomed to being heroic in secret. Then again, it’s likely Rhys has never been properly heroic in his life.
“Gwen,” Jack says, only just missing a beat as he steps back and makes to leave. “I need a word.”
She’s barely up the stairs before Owen is helping Rhys up and into his clothes. “I’ve given you a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Gwen’s got instructions on how to help you with the wound. And trust me, you’ll need a bit of a hand with it initially. Take it from someone who knows.” His eyes flit up to Ianto.
The look Owen gives him is almost - almost - friendly. Ianto nods respect in return, and excuses himself to the Hub to finish up the logistics and maybe sort out some drinks. It’s been quite a day, it’s likely to be a long evening, and if he can power through the next few hours without going mad, maybe he’ll find a way to ask Jack to take care of him while he makes sense of the fact that he’s still alive after having a man pull the trigger on him with murderous intent. Right now, though, what he needs is something a fair bit stronger than coffee.
# # #
“I’m not doing it. I won't drug him.”
The words echo through the Hub before the entry alarm stops declaring Gwen’s re-entry, and Jack can’t help but wonder why it’s too much to ask that someone on his team follows a damn order once in a while.
“You have to,” Tosh tells her, and Owen backs her up (“You can’t allow him to remember.”), but it’s Ianto’s voice that Jack hears over his shoulder.
“It's the rules.”
Jack doesn’t miss the unspoken plea in Ianto’s voice but it’s been a bastard of a day and Gwen seems intent on having this ugly, stupid moment right this very minute, in front of everybody. Worse, she looks like she wants to drag everyone else into it.
“But none of you have any partners outside of this!”
He needs to shut this down, and shut it down now. “But we understand how you feel,” Jack says in an effort to appease her. If he can calm her down -
“No, you don't. No, you don't, Jack! You all think it's cold and lonely out there. But it isn’t for me because I have him. He matters. And I've lied to him for long enough. What he did today was so brave.” She eyes them all, now, like she’s trying to bring them over to her side. “Braver than any of us because we signed up for this. But he didn't! He did it because he loves me, and I won't take that away from him! I won't! And if that means I have to quit or you Retcon me or whatever, then fine, fine.”
Jack tosses Ianto his water with a certainty that proclaims his willingness to handle this, and then puts himself as aggressively as he dares into Gwen’s space. He stands close enough that he’s sure she can feel the rage radiating off of him. “You really think you could go back to your old life before Torchwood?” It’s not a question. It’s a challenge.
She raises her chin in defiance. “I wouldn't know anything different.”
“I would.”
He should not be stunned by the way Gwen’s boldness outstrips her uncertainty. Of course it does. It’s why he hired her, isn’t it? And really, this isn’t the first time she’s chosen Rhys over him. Gwen would - and has - tried to sacrifice the world for Rhys.
At least this time Jack can be grateful that none of his team seems to feel the urge to shoot him over it. Yet.
“Give Rhys my love and I will see you tomorrow,” he growls in a tone that he hopes belies the way he’s lost this particular battle. Judging by the look on Toshiko’s face, though, his failure is all too clear. He takes his water back from Ianto and slinks back into his office feeling uncomfortably like a whipped dog. Out of childish spite, he turns on the CCTV just in time to watch Gwen’s allegiances declare themselves once more. She isn’t even doing it for his benefit any longer, though it’s possible she chose that spot to prove a point.
Through the glass behind him, Jack hears the gentle patter of keystrokes resume.
Jack would sit like this forever, staring at an empty screen except that suddenly Ianto is at his desk with a second tumbler, pouring a pair of whiskies instead of just refreshing his own. When Ianto holds one out, Jack narrows his eyes, uncertain.
“Go on. Take it.”
He does as he’s told. After a moment’s hesitation, he downs it in one. Ianto refills it.
“She led us for a year,” Ianto intones a little distantly. “If you were still hoping for your power struggle, I think that may have been it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Ah.” Ianto takes a sip of his drink and settles himself on the edge of Jack’s desk. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think this constitutes a coup.”
Jack raises his eyebrows. “Oh? And what would you call it?”
Ianto contemplates his glass. “I would say that it’s been a long time in coming and that Gwen is a vital member of the team. If anyone were to receive special consideration under the circumstances, it should be her and Rhys.”
“But?”
“But nothing,” Ianto says, firmer now. “That wasn’t a leading statement, Jack. Gwen’s choice doesn’t change things. What’s done is done. Today’s events are a curiosity, not a sea change.”
“You sound awfully certain of that.”
“Some certainties are awful.” Ianto swallows down the rest of his whisky, and lets his glass land on the wood of Jack’s desk with a heavy thunk. “I’ll be in the archives. Call me when the others leave.”
“Yeah,” Jack replies and watches as Ianto leaves his office looking far older than he has any right to. He finishes his drink in his own time, and idly watches the strangers pass on his screen.
Prev (Pt #24) (Warnings: language)
-
Next (Pt #26) (Warnings: language)