Just Like A Jones 12/25
TITLE: Just Like A Jones
Chapter: 12/25
Rating: g - nc-17 for the whole series
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto. Mica. Gwen/Rhys. Lois. Johnny/Rhiannon. OC's
Synopsis: Mica may be a Davies, but sometimes she acts like a Jones. Set 13 years in the future. The world is a very different place, and Torchwood is a world that Jack doesn't want to know, but a promise made a long time ago brings him back to their door whether he likes it or not. Mica is in awe of a past she didn't know and a man she barely remembers, but her passion for his world takes her on a journey she never expected.
Spoilers: Aftermath of COE.
Disclaimer: Not mine, if it was this woul not need to be written.
A/N - I shall make you happy! jut watch me! happy fix.
Thanks. Thanks to everyone who has replied so far XD. As i have said before it was lack of feedbak that made me give up before, but the comment i got for ch8 made me so happy and confident and determined to keep going for this fandom. )
Updates will be bak to normal now.
PART 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Jack looked down at Ianto and put his hands of the glass of the Cryogenic chamber. It had been three days since they tried to revive him and failed, but Jack couldn't leave his side. Losing him once had been torture, but losing him twice was a new kind of hell. He hadn't shaved since, or eaten, or even had a drink; he stunk too. If Ianto Jones were to wake up at that moment he would be ashamed at the man staring through the glass at him, of course that was presuming that he recognised him at all.
“Are you still here?” Mica appeared in the doorway and leaned on the wall.
“Where else would I go?”
She shrugged. “Home?”
“And do what?” Jack asked. “Look at your mother and pretend I'm fine?”
“Eat, sleep, drink? Anything really, but I'm begging you to wash.” She walked over and stood beside him putting her hand on his shoulder. “Please.”
“Why?”
“You smell. Badly.”
“If he woke up he would sort me out.” Jack smiled sadly and stroked the glass above Ianto's face. “I'm waiting for it.” He sighed and looked at her. “But that isn't going to happen is it? I'll never see him smile again.”
Mica put her hand over his, then moved it away from the chamber. “Maybe you just need to stop looking at him for a while.”
“I was so sure it would work.” Jack sighed and gazed down at the Welshman, he looked pristine and cold again. “Our theory was so strong. The antidote worked on the rat and I was so sure I would get to hold him again.”
“I know.” Mica's voice cracked a little. “I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault.” Jack slid his hand into hers. “It's nobody's fault.”
“I'm not giving up.”
“Maybe you should. It feels worse now than it ever did, it's like I have hope that he'll come back, but inside I know he never will.”
“You can't know that.”
Jack sighed and turned to face her. “It's been three days Mica, and what have we achieved?” He looked at Ianto again. "Nothing, that's what."
“We're closer than we were a week ago. Sometimes there's no such thing as a quick fix.”
“And sometimes theres no fix at all.”
Mica sighed and turned Jack around by his arm. “Why are you giving up?”
“Could you just leave me?” Jack asked. “I don't want you to see me this way.”
“Jack--”
“Leave me. Please.”
Mica walked towards the door and didn't look back, then headed for the shooting range.
~~~~~*~~~~~~
“I thought I would find you here.”
Gwen walked into the shooting range and leaned on the wall, watching Mica as she stared straight ahead and blew the heads off a pack of aliens with a semi-automatic. It had been three days since she had seen that girl smile; all she seemed to do was work on her own project with the rats in the lab, the ones that kept exploding, and spend time shooting. She never seemed to leave.
“Your mother just called again asking if i knew where you were.” She sighed. “She thinks we're friends, and she hates that, but she never really knows where you go.”
“And that's the way it's going to stay. Knowing where I go, that I'm part of Torchwood, it would kill her with worry.”
“She's desperate to know where you are.”
“And what did you tell her?” Mica didn't remove her gaze from the cardboard enemy and squeezed four more bullets out of the gun in quick succession. She hit every target.
“I told her you were out in Newport on the piss with Donna and Claire.”
Two more Cardboard Weevils dead.
“I think you got her,” she said, “that one is definitely dead.”
She waited for Mica for lower her gun and take off her ear protection before she walked over, then picked up one of the guns and looked at it. “I don't think there's a gun in this place that you haven't abused recently.”
“I'm trying to familiarise myself. I'm trying to be better.”
Gwen put the gun down. “You work too much.”
“Yet I still fail.” Mica sighed and hung her head. “I fail at everything eventually.”
“You're on a pity parade tonight.” The older woman pursed her lips and looked closely at her. “There's no call for it. In time you'll be the best.”
“I don't have time.”
“You're already bloody brilliant.”
“Brilliant isn't enough.”
Gwen sighed. “Listen, are you all right? You seem a bit--” she searched for her words carefully. “Off.”
Mica sighed. “I'm fine. I just needed some target practice.”
“It looked suspiciously like you're working out some issues if you ask me.” Gwen waited for a response, but it wasn't coming. “You've been acting strange the last few days.”
“Strange?”
“You look down.”
“Don't worry about me. I'll be fine.” Mica sat down on the desk. “It's this place, there's no natural light.”
Gwen sat beside her. “When you join Torchwood you have to embark on a whole different life full of secrets and lies. After a while it starts to really eat away at you from the inside out.”
Mica said nothing.
“At first it seems really easy to handle. You create a different life for yourself and lie and it's fine. Then the stress starts and you realise that what you're doing is lying about who you really are to the people who you love the most.”
“I hate not having anyone I can talk to. I can't talk to my mum any more, I don't think she would understand. ”
“There's me? Jack?”
Mica shook her head. “me and Jack-- we seem so far apart right now.”
“The thing is--” Gwen took a deep breath. “Life is different for everyone. Two people can have the same life and sometimes those tiny differences make you so different that it's hard to see past, but you can.”
Mica jumped up. “Differences?”
“Yeah. Differences.”
Mica smiled. “Everyone is different, our genetic make-up is different, our experience is different. Unique.”
“Exactly. Sometimes we don't even understand how different we are until we really think about it. But in the end, if we try to see past them, we're all the same.”
“And just because something doesn't work for one person it doesn't mean it wont work for another.” Mica hugged Gwen tightly. “You're brilliant.”
“I am?”
“Yes.” Mica ran out the room and shut the door behind her.
“Glad I could help.”
~~~~~*~~~~~
Jack was sleeping in the morgue when he felt someone shaking him awake; he opened one eye and tried to focus.
“Jack!” Mica shook Jack violently. “Jack! Wake up!”
“What is it?” His voice was groggy.
“Get up! I have something to show you!” She held a rat out in front of his face.
“It's a rat.”
“It's dead!” Mica sounded just a little too happy.
“I can see that, it's very morbid.” He pushed it away from his face. “Take it away.”
Jack sat up and Mica dragged him to his feet and over the room to look at the computer screen. She brought up a diagram of two molecular structures, only very slightly different.
“I've spent three out of the last four days trying and failing to create a new antidote. I always came up with the same combination of chemicals, that was until yesterday when I made a breakthrough. There was one difference that I didn't allow for when trying the antidote on the rats before.”
Jack sighed wearily. “What's that?”
“They were fresh.” She moved her fingers across the keys and brought the two different molecular structures together; one showed as a shadow above the other. “I put Samuel here - God rest his tiny little ratty soul -- into the cryogenic chamber.”
“That would be why he's dead.”
“Shut up and listen. I thawed him out just like we did with Uncle Ianto and the antidote didn't work!” Mica was talking so fast that all her words were starting to blur together. “It didn't work!”
“I'm missing the point of your enthusiasm here.”
“The one thing that stopped the antidote from working was the chemicals used in cryogenics.” She turned to face him. “I discovered that it's just not possible.”
Jack slumped down in the chair. “So, after four days, what you're really excited about is finding out that it's actually impossible to bring him back?”
“Well--” Mica thought about it for a moment. “Yes. But no.”
“It can't be both.”
“There's a solution. It's so simple that I don't even know why I didn't think about it before.” Mica sighed, calming herself, a sat down beside Jack. She took his dirty hand. “Do you remember that you told me once how you wished that you could just pluck Uncle Ianto out of time?”
“Yes.”
“Well what if you can?” She took his wrist and gestured towards his Vortex Manipulator. “You've had the answer right here all along.”
“No.” Jack shook his head. “Taking Ianto out of time would alter the time line too much. If he hadn't died the world could be so different that it would cause ripples in--”
“I'm not talking about that.”
“You're not?”
“What if we took him after he was dead?”
“Then he'd still be dead.”
“Not for long.” She smiled. “If we take him before Torchwood get the change to freeze him and bring him back here we could administer the antidote and it would work. I know it would work. Sometimes you have to fail to succeed.”
“I couldn't get him out of Westminster on my own.”
“I didn't say you, I said we.”
Jack shook his head and blinked his confusion away. “Okay, so let's just presume that this idea isn't insane and would actually work. How would we even get him out? Westminster would be crawling with Unit. It would be far to dangerous for you and I couldn't manage it on my own.”
“You wouldn't do it on your own.”
“Well I'm not taking you.”
“I'd only follow you.”
“That would be an impossibility.”
“No it wouldn't.” She took a box out of her pocket and removed a small object that looked like a circuit board. “You always tell me that I'm just like a Jones,” she said, “and Jones' are determined, they're clever and they can be incredibly ruthless when they need to be.”
“What is that?”
“This is your vortex manipulator but without all the pretty packaging. I cloned it. Now it doesn't do exactly what yours does, it's sort of a no frills version, but it would take me back. And if you don't help me I'll only do it on my own and without you it would be much more dangerous.” She smiled. “Everyone needs a bodyguard that is incapable of dying.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do you want him back?”
Jack lowered his gaze. “More than anything.”
“Then there's your answer.”
~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~
PART 13 HERE