Fic: Masks
Title: Masks
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: None, set mid season 2
Warnings: Suggestively dark
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: The state of trust in Torchwood was shaky to begin with.
AN: 'We're all going to die' cliche, for cliche_bingo
Ianto was used to carrying a tray loaded with four cups of coffee up the winding staircase. Used to it and therefore paid little attention while doing it. He had good enough reflexes that he could slide out of the way if given sufficient warning. Today had seemed dull enough that sudden and excitable movement from the others seemed unlikely.
In fact they'd been quiet all day, he hadn't been able to hear them arguing through the speakers in the basement, with Jack quietly sighing and making the occasional amusing observation from the sidelines. A murmur of familiar conversation that drifted and rang against the inside of the hub. A familiarity that wasn't quite reassuring, but was something close, something real.
He balanced the tray on a forearm and opened the door.
Ianto liked to think he was mentally prepared for almost anything, it was expected for the Torchwood staff to be full aware that anything could, and indeed did, happen. They'd been enough drills, some for clear and specific threats and others more flexible, more workable for some of the more unexpected dangers the universe could throw at them.
Ianto suspected Jack had far too much fun making up new ones and springing them on everyone.
This didn't feel like a drill.
Having a gun stuck in his face was not an entirely new sensation for Ianto. However neither was it something anyone could be expected to get used to.
There was a gun in his face now, a breath away from touching the skin, steady and unwavering in Jack's hand.
Everyone was in Jack's office, eyeing him with a combination of horrified fascination and anger. He opened his mouth, fully intent on asking what had provoked this united front of mistrust
"Put down the coffee," Jack said slowly. After a careful pause Ianto very slowly did as he was told. If they'd found any suspicious electronics in the basement this time they weren't his.
"What's happening?" he asked, voice careful and measured, as unthreatening as he could make it. The gun didn't so much as drift from his face
Jack raised an eyebrow very slowly, an eyebrow that said in no uncertain terms 'as if you didn't know.' Ianto went very, very still, because he honestly didn't.
The long period of silence, and possibly his lack of movement, pushed Jack to speak again.
"There's a polymorph in the hub," he said quietly.
"A what?" Because in situations like this it seemed prudent to be absolutely clear on what the danger was.
"A polymorph, a creature whose musculature allows it to mimic other living creatures perfectly."
"A shapeshifter?" Ianto asked, because clarification seemed important.
"If you want to be less technical."
"And you think it's...pretending to be me?"
"We're fairly certain it's pretending to be you," Owen said simply. Which was ironic, and more than a little depressing, because it clearly wasn't.
Ianto's gaze dropped to the gun, then back up to Jack's face.
His expression said everything, and having that quiet ruthless blankness turned on him was more frightening than he would have ever thought.
But Jack didn't shoot him, though there was no doubt that he would if Ianto gave him the slightest excuse.
It occurred to him that he hadn't yet.
"You thought I'd be less like me didn't you, so you could shoot me with impunity," he said quietly. His voice was flat, he thought he'd meant it as a question, but it came out sounding more like an observation. Or an accusation.
Definitely an accusation.
Jack didn't look guilty. But he didn't look certain either.
How on earth did you act more yourself than normal?
Ianto sighed very carefully.
"I could protest that I'm not," he said slowly. "For all the good it would do."
There was a long tense moment where Ianto honestly believed Jack would shoot him anyway. Because this was Torchwood, where trust was paper thin, and liable to be given or taken away on a whim. He stayed completely still, watching Jack, and said nothing at all.
"Sit down," Jack said eventually. Ianto didn't relax, though he couldn't help but swallow shaky relief. He very slowly obeyed, fingers pushing the tray of coffee to one side.
Owen's jaw tightened, shifted, and Gwen was throwing Jack incredulous looks. Tosh just looked terrified, and it was the last that made Ianto forcibly relax against the table.
It seemed more disturbing than possible that one of them was not part of the team.
"Where have you been Ianto? What have you been doing all morning?"
He knew better than to do anything but answer.
"I've been in archive, logging security information from last month."
"Bullshit," Owen said quietly, and Ianto could feel the tension in the room go up, the way everyone's edges seemed to sharpen and it occurred to him, sickeningly, that he was closer to death than he'd been for a long time.
All based on a decision.
Did Jack think the chance that he was really him was great enough to risk letting him live.
In any other place, any other time, he thought the very idea would have made him feel sick.
But he'd been a part of Torchwood for too long.
"I finished about twenty minutes ago, I came up the back stairs, I made coffee-"
"What did you put in the coffee?" Owen snapped, like he didn't for one second expect the answer to be anything less than sinister.
Ianto ignored the stupidity of the question.
"If the intruder alarms had gone off I would have been up sooner," he accused instead. Perfectly aware of whose last medical experiment had shorted them out.
"Fuck you," Owen said simply.
"I know you don't usually take this much offence," Gwen's voice was dry and tight.
"What do you know," Owen demanded viciously.
Gwen looked for all the world like she didn't know whether to be furious or scared.
Tosh very carefully raised a hand, not close enough to be threatening, but enough to slowly draw their attention.
"I don't think we know each other well enough to be having discussions about what we would or wouldn't do," she said carefully. Her face was clearly unhappy about it. "I don't think it's going to get us anywhere to start throwing around accusations.
"Tosh is right," Jack said quietly. Though the gun was still a suggestion Ianto wasn't happy about.
"I can assure you that if you shoot me now you'll feel very stupid about it later," he said softly. Whereas Ianto, of course, wouldn't feel anything at all.
There was another long pause.
"If it's not you then we have a dilemma," Jack's voice was tight.
"Oh," Ianto said quietly. Though he'd already realised the problem.
Which, for him, was more of a certainty.
"If it's not you then it's one of us," Tosh said carefully before Jack could speak. "It's been one of us all along."
Gwen was pale, eyes wide and watchful, hands flicking together every time someone moved but trying not to show it. Tosh was folded into herself, nervous and uncertain, voice not entirely steady but still determined to be efficient. Owen, Owen looked brittle and angry, all twitches and badly contained frustration, mouth a thin line.
Ianto prided himself on noticing the small unimportant details. He'd spent a great deal of time watching and remembering, because that was the easiest way to anticipate someone's needs, to provide without having to be asked, to know ahead of time.
But in the still, tense atmosphere of Jack's office it had very quickly become clear that if one of them really was a shapeshifter then they were masquerading as one of the team almost perfectly.
Ianto would have sworn blind that they were all themselves.
But then could anything ever be flawless?
He watched Jack come to a decision about his fate. The gun went down, and Jack shifted, stance more relaxed, but no happier. He leant against the desk.
"The hub's on full lock-down, no one in or out until this thing's dead."
"I'm assuming we know for certain that there's one here," Ianto asked.
Jack nodded. "We have it on security cameras outside, and then inside."
"Just one," Tosh added, with something like relief. Ianto suspected he'd missed the show and tell, where Jack described exactly what they were dealing with.
"Just one," Jack repeated. "And it made a mistake coming in here, because it's not getting out again."
"We thought it was you," Gwen told him. "We were sure it was you. No one had seen you since lunchtime."
"I still think it’s you," Owen said nastily. Everyone ignored him, which proved his obnoxiousness was tellingly in character.
But there was still something they seemed to be holding on to.
"What aren't you saying?"
"Whoever it's pretending to be is dead, because it wouldn't let itself be discovered as a duplicate," Jack's voice was brittle.
It made perfect sense, and Ianto couldn't help but feel quiet numb grief, at not knowing which one of them was now not only replaced but gone.
But Jack hadn't finished.
"So if you really aren't Ianto, I'm going to kill you." There was a cold ruthlessness to the words that Ianto found himself unsurprised by, though even knowing he was himself he couldn't help but be unsettled by their certainty.
"If I'm really not me that sounds perfectly fair," Ianto told him.
Jack nodded.
He didn't ask about help from outside, he didn't ask about evacuation procedures. He didn't say anything which might have been considered suspect. Jack seemed to sense his desire not to incriminate himself unintentionally.
"I've seen the way this goes, I've decided that this is better than the alternative. This is a species that's perfectly willing to use human beings as a food source, and the minute it gets out of here it's going to eat, and there's not a lot we'll be able to do about it."
"Someone will stop it-"
Jack shook his head at Gwen's surety.
"It's too good at hiding in plain sight, it's become too good at being something it's not. Two of these things stripped a planet clean, a planet about a hundred years or so ahead of your technology."
"Then surely it would understand how ours works?" Tosh protested.
"I don't think they work like us." Jack said carefully. "They just use people as camouflage, the rest of the time they're pretty much all animal, and like any desperate animal they'll get nasty if they feel cornered."
Ianto half suspected Jack was trying to needle the creature into making a mistake.
Owen looked irritated, Tosh looked scared and Gwen was viewing everyone with quiet worried suspicion.
All three of them fidgeted-
Ianto looked again.
There was faintest suggestion of something out of place. Too quick, too strange for him to be certain.
He looked at Jack again when he spoke.
"In a day or two this thing is going to realise it's not getting out and it's going to try its best to rip us all to pieces."
"You'll survive," Owen pointed out.
"But I don't think I'll enjoy the whole 'being digested' part," Jack said tartly, which Ianto could understand.
"How do we know it's not pretending to be you?" Ianto asked, for argument's sake.
Jack's expression was half frustrated and half amused.
"Because I proved it by shooting myself in the head, and besides, I don't think there's anywhere this thing could have stashed my body for long enough to play masquerade with the rest of you."
"Then why do you have the gun, you're the only one of us that can't die?"
"Because it's my gun."
Gwen rolled her eyes, Tosh's face was quiet, eyes flickering guiltily between everyone like she was trying to watch them all at once, but couldn't help but feel torn about it. Owen scoffed amused annoyance.
Ianto was struck again by the thought of tiny pieces that didn't fit.
"I want everyone on security feeds, collect every piece of information we have on where this thing came from and if it came alone."
He turned in his chair as everyone started a slow walk down the stairs.
"No one leaves the hub," he added. "Keep in eyeshot of each other."
They didn't mill like they usually did, they fanned out instead, leaving each other as quickly as they could, but still looking back, still taking note of where the others were.
It was there again, that sense of wrongness. Tiny gestures and expressions that weren't quite right.
Ianto's pulse slipped into something heavier, something faster, when he realised that he knew, he knew who wasn't who they were supposed to be.
He forced himself to concentrate on Jack's face. To pay attention, because he couldn't afford to be suspicious, couldn’t afford to be suspected. Jack didn't say anything for a minute, he stared at Ianto like he was trying to work out what was under his skin. Ianto couldn't help but be hurt at the scrutiny. He suspected he was being judged.
But he was wrong.
"You always were the observant one," Jack said quietly. "Always watching."
Jack's hand was warm on his, the curve of metal hard under his fingers as he pushed it against, and then under, his own. He added just a little pressure, a flicker of uncertainty mixed with something that looked a lot like trust.
"Ianto." Jack didn't say anything else. His fingers very slowly slid away, leaving Ianto holding his gun.
Then he stood and walked away.
Ianto stared at the gun for a long time.
Jack trusted him to be sure.
But Ianto was not certain he trusted himself.
...
He pushed the chair back, made his way into the main hub.
The solid weight in his hand was almost unbearable, but he lifted it easily enough.
The scrape of chair on grating, the harsh strident call for Jack. But the face that protested, it wasn't right.
Ianto was certain, he was certain enough.
He pulled the trigger.
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: None, set mid season 2
Warnings: Suggestively dark
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: The state of trust in Torchwood was shaky to begin with.
AN: 'We're all going to die' cliche, for cliche_bingo
Ianto was used to carrying a tray loaded with four cups of coffee up the winding staircase. Used to it and therefore paid little attention while doing it. He had good enough reflexes that he could slide out of the way if given sufficient warning. Today had seemed dull enough that sudden and excitable movement from the others seemed unlikely.
In fact they'd been quiet all day, he hadn't been able to hear them arguing through the speakers in the basement, with Jack quietly sighing and making the occasional amusing observation from the sidelines. A murmur of familiar conversation that drifted and rang against the inside of the hub. A familiarity that wasn't quite reassuring, but was something close, something real.
He balanced the tray on a forearm and opened the door.
Ianto liked to think he was mentally prepared for almost anything, it was expected for the Torchwood staff to be full aware that anything could, and indeed did, happen. They'd been enough drills, some for clear and specific threats and others more flexible, more workable for some of the more unexpected dangers the universe could throw at them.
Ianto suspected Jack had far too much fun making up new ones and springing them on everyone.
This didn't feel like a drill.
Having a gun stuck in his face was not an entirely new sensation for Ianto. However neither was it something anyone could be expected to get used to.
There was a gun in his face now, a breath away from touching the skin, steady and unwavering in Jack's hand.
Everyone was in Jack's office, eyeing him with a combination of horrified fascination and anger. He opened his mouth, fully intent on asking what had provoked this united front of mistrust
"Put down the coffee," Jack said slowly. After a careful pause Ianto very slowly did as he was told. If they'd found any suspicious electronics in the basement this time they weren't his.
"What's happening?" he asked, voice careful and measured, as unthreatening as he could make it. The gun didn't so much as drift from his face
Jack raised an eyebrow very slowly, an eyebrow that said in no uncertain terms 'as if you didn't know.' Ianto went very, very still, because he honestly didn't.
The long period of silence, and possibly his lack of movement, pushed Jack to speak again.
"There's a polymorph in the hub," he said quietly.
"A what?" Because in situations like this it seemed prudent to be absolutely clear on what the danger was.
"A polymorph, a creature whose musculature allows it to mimic other living creatures perfectly."
"A shapeshifter?" Ianto asked, because clarification seemed important.
"If you want to be less technical."
"And you think it's...pretending to be me?"
"We're fairly certain it's pretending to be you," Owen said simply. Which was ironic, and more than a little depressing, because it clearly wasn't.
Ianto's gaze dropped to the gun, then back up to Jack's face.
His expression said everything, and having that quiet ruthless blankness turned on him was more frightening than he would have ever thought.
But Jack didn't shoot him, though there was no doubt that he would if Ianto gave him the slightest excuse.
It occurred to him that he hadn't yet.
"You thought I'd be less like me didn't you, so you could shoot me with impunity," he said quietly. His voice was flat, he thought he'd meant it as a question, but it came out sounding more like an observation. Or an accusation.
Definitely an accusation.
Jack didn't look guilty. But he didn't look certain either.
How on earth did you act more yourself than normal?
Ianto sighed very carefully.
"I could protest that I'm not," he said slowly. "For all the good it would do."
There was a long tense moment where Ianto honestly believed Jack would shoot him anyway. Because this was Torchwood, where trust was paper thin, and liable to be given or taken away on a whim. He stayed completely still, watching Jack, and said nothing at all.
"Sit down," Jack said eventually. Ianto didn't relax, though he couldn't help but swallow shaky relief. He very slowly obeyed, fingers pushing the tray of coffee to one side.
Owen's jaw tightened, shifted, and Gwen was throwing Jack incredulous looks. Tosh just looked terrified, and it was the last that made Ianto forcibly relax against the table.
It seemed more disturbing than possible that one of them was not part of the team.
"Where have you been Ianto? What have you been doing all morning?"
He knew better than to do anything but answer.
"I've been in archive, logging security information from last month."
"Bullshit," Owen said quietly, and Ianto could feel the tension in the room go up, the way everyone's edges seemed to sharpen and it occurred to him, sickeningly, that he was closer to death than he'd been for a long time.
All based on a decision.
Did Jack think the chance that he was really him was great enough to risk letting him live.
In any other place, any other time, he thought the very idea would have made him feel sick.
But he'd been a part of Torchwood for too long.
"I finished about twenty minutes ago, I came up the back stairs, I made coffee-"
"What did you put in the coffee?" Owen snapped, like he didn't for one second expect the answer to be anything less than sinister.
Ianto ignored the stupidity of the question.
"If the intruder alarms had gone off I would have been up sooner," he accused instead. Perfectly aware of whose last medical experiment had shorted them out.
"Fuck you," Owen said simply.
"I know you don't usually take this much offence," Gwen's voice was dry and tight.
"What do you know," Owen demanded viciously.
Gwen looked for all the world like she didn't know whether to be furious or scared.
Tosh very carefully raised a hand, not close enough to be threatening, but enough to slowly draw their attention.
"I don't think we know each other well enough to be having discussions about what we would or wouldn't do," she said carefully. Her face was clearly unhappy about it. "I don't think it's going to get us anywhere to start throwing around accusations.
"Tosh is right," Jack said quietly. Though the gun was still a suggestion Ianto wasn't happy about.
"I can assure you that if you shoot me now you'll feel very stupid about it later," he said softly. Whereas Ianto, of course, wouldn't feel anything at all.
There was another long pause.
"If it's not you then we have a dilemma," Jack's voice was tight.
"Oh," Ianto said quietly. Though he'd already realised the problem.
Which, for him, was more of a certainty.
"If it's not you then it's one of us," Tosh said carefully before Jack could speak. "It's been one of us all along."
Gwen was pale, eyes wide and watchful, hands flicking together every time someone moved but trying not to show it. Tosh was folded into herself, nervous and uncertain, voice not entirely steady but still determined to be efficient. Owen, Owen looked brittle and angry, all twitches and badly contained frustration, mouth a thin line.
Ianto prided himself on noticing the small unimportant details. He'd spent a great deal of time watching and remembering, because that was the easiest way to anticipate someone's needs, to provide without having to be asked, to know ahead of time.
But in the still, tense atmosphere of Jack's office it had very quickly become clear that if one of them really was a shapeshifter then they were masquerading as one of the team almost perfectly.
Ianto would have sworn blind that they were all themselves.
But then could anything ever be flawless?
He watched Jack come to a decision about his fate. The gun went down, and Jack shifted, stance more relaxed, but no happier. He leant against the desk.
"The hub's on full lock-down, no one in or out until this thing's dead."
"I'm assuming we know for certain that there's one here," Ianto asked.
Jack nodded. "We have it on security cameras outside, and then inside."
"Just one," Tosh added, with something like relief. Ianto suspected he'd missed the show and tell, where Jack described exactly what they were dealing with.
"Just one," Jack repeated. "And it made a mistake coming in here, because it's not getting out again."
"We thought it was you," Gwen told him. "We were sure it was you. No one had seen you since lunchtime."
"I still think it’s you," Owen said nastily. Everyone ignored him, which proved his obnoxiousness was tellingly in character.
But there was still something they seemed to be holding on to.
"What aren't you saying?"
"Whoever it's pretending to be is dead, because it wouldn't let itself be discovered as a duplicate," Jack's voice was brittle.
It made perfect sense, and Ianto couldn't help but feel quiet numb grief, at not knowing which one of them was now not only replaced but gone.
But Jack hadn't finished.
"So if you really aren't Ianto, I'm going to kill you." There was a cold ruthlessness to the words that Ianto found himself unsurprised by, though even knowing he was himself he couldn't help but be unsettled by their certainty.
"If I'm really not me that sounds perfectly fair," Ianto told him.
Jack nodded.
He didn't ask about help from outside, he didn't ask about evacuation procedures. He didn't say anything which might have been considered suspect. Jack seemed to sense his desire not to incriminate himself unintentionally.
"I've seen the way this goes, I've decided that this is better than the alternative. This is a species that's perfectly willing to use human beings as a food source, and the minute it gets out of here it's going to eat, and there's not a lot we'll be able to do about it."
"Someone will stop it-"
Jack shook his head at Gwen's surety.
"It's too good at hiding in plain sight, it's become too good at being something it's not. Two of these things stripped a planet clean, a planet about a hundred years or so ahead of your technology."
"Then surely it would understand how ours works?" Tosh protested.
"I don't think they work like us." Jack said carefully. "They just use people as camouflage, the rest of the time they're pretty much all animal, and like any desperate animal they'll get nasty if they feel cornered."
Ianto half suspected Jack was trying to needle the creature into making a mistake.
Owen looked irritated, Tosh looked scared and Gwen was viewing everyone with quiet worried suspicion.
All three of them fidgeted-
Ianto looked again.
There was faintest suggestion of something out of place. Too quick, too strange for him to be certain.
He looked at Jack again when he spoke.
"In a day or two this thing is going to realise it's not getting out and it's going to try its best to rip us all to pieces."
"You'll survive," Owen pointed out.
"But I don't think I'll enjoy the whole 'being digested' part," Jack said tartly, which Ianto could understand.
"How do we know it's not pretending to be you?" Ianto asked, for argument's sake.
Jack's expression was half frustrated and half amused.
"Because I proved it by shooting myself in the head, and besides, I don't think there's anywhere this thing could have stashed my body for long enough to play masquerade with the rest of you."
"Then why do you have the gun, you're the only one of us that can't die?"
"Because it's my gun."
Gwen rolled her eyes, Tosh's face was quiet, eyes flickering guiltily between everyone like she was trying to watch them all at once, but couldn't help but feel torn about it. Owen scoffed amused annoyance.
Ianto was struck again by the thought of tiny pieces that didn't fit.
"I want everyone on security feeds, collect every piece of information we have on where this thing came from and if it came alone."
He turned in his chair as everyone started a slow walk down the stairs.
"No one leaves the hub," he added. "Keep in eyeshot of each other."
They didn't mill like they usually did, they fanned out instead, leaving each other as quickly as they could, but still looking back, still taking note of where the others were.
It was there again, that sense of wrongness. Tiny gestures and expressions that weren't quite right.
Ianto's pulse slipped into something heavier, something faster, when he realised that he knew, he knew who wasn't who they were supposed to be.
He forced himself to concentrate on Jack's face. To pay attention, because he couldn't afford to be suspicious, couldn’t afford to be suspected. Jack didn't say anything for a minute, he stared at Ianto like he was trying to work out what was under his skin. Ianto couldn't help but be hurt at the scrutiny. He suspected he was being judged.
But he was wrong.
"You always were the observant one," Jack said quietly. "Always watching."
Jack's hand was warm on his, the curve of metal hard under his fingers as he pushed it against, and then under, his own. He added just a little pressure, a flicker of uncertainty mixed with something that looked a lot like trust.
"Ianto." Jack didn't say anything else. His fingers very slowly slid away, leaving Ianto holding his gun.
Then he stood and walked away.
Ianto stared at the gun for a long time.
Jack trusted him to be sure.
But Ianto was not certain he trusted himself.
...
He pushed the chair back, made his way into the main hub.
The solid weight in his hand was almost unbearable, but he lifted it easily enough.
The scrape of chair on grating, the harsh strident call for Jack. But the face that protested, it wasn't right.
Ianto was certain, he was certain enough.
He pulled the trigger.