TW/DW Fic: Rescues (2/3)
Title: Rescues (2/3)
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Ianto, Steven, Jack, Gwen, various Who and TW characters, OCs
Pairings: canon pairings, Ianto/OMC, past Ianto/others
Rating: R
Words: 13,000 (3,800 this part)
Warnings: child endangerment, mentions of child abuse, emo as hell, wtfpresenttense
Spoilers: TW: CoE, DW: The Big Bang (written before series 6 premiered, mentions the gender of Gwen's baby)
Betas: fide_et_spe and humantales
Summary: Brought back by Amy but unable to return home, Ianto and Steven attempt to build a new life.
AN: Sequel to Strays. Familiarity with that story is not required to read this one. (That one was Ianto/Amy porn. This is what happens next.)
Part One
***
Part Two
***
The weather is changing, and all Ianto's allergies are happy to describe every pressure difference. Some days are so thick and grey, he thinks he must still be dead, but red eyes and a runny nose are sure signs he's in the land of the reluctantly living.
They have come to London, although it is exorbitantly expensive, because Ianto knows the places where he can purchase false names with the last of their money. Not all the immigrants to Britain, from other countries or other planets, want to live with their old identities. Torchwood kept track of the gatekeepers, the paper-peddlers who could open doors. By the end of things, when it was just the three of them left, the best they could do (Jack said) was to make sure there weren't too many unknown visitors, that the alien underworld self-policed the regular difficulties amongst newcomers to the area. Now they are the newcomers, Lloyd and Christopher Fellowes.
He works in a shop for very little. Steven has started at a new school, though he's behind in everything, and they have to sit together at the table every night until it's half-past late, doing his homework and catching him up.
They've been in their tiny flat for a week when Ianto sees the bill posted. "Feeling lost? Life not what you expected when you got back to it? Contact Amy's Friends." There's a number.
***
The handsome man has friends with him, and they make Richard's dining room look tiny as he finds seats. It was cosy before, he thinks, just right for two people and perhaps a child, and then he pushes that thought away again.
"You're not with the police," he says. Behind him, one of the women has made herself at home, rummaging through his kitchen for the makings of tea.
"We work with them from time to time, but no, we're not on their payroll." He's American. The man reaches into his wallet and pulls out a photograph. He stares for a moment longer than a policeman would, before handing it to Richard like something valuable.
"The report came over the wire," says the second woman, the one who's sitting with them at the table. She's got a friendly, gapped grin that makes him want to share. "You reported a child missing, possibly endangered."
Richard looks at the snap. It looks a lot like the boy who spent the night a month ago. He takes out his own mobile, and searches for a picture he took of Nathan and Steven. "This was them."
The man takes the mobile, and then passes it to the woman. They both shake their heads.
The second man is standing behind the woman's chair. He's thin, and young, and he looks like he's had too many arguments in his life. He takes the mobile and looks hard at the snap. "I'm telling you, it's the same child. And I think I've seen that bloke somewhere before."
"On a 'Wanted' poster, maybe," says the handsome man. "I don't see it, Albert. I think you read the name, and it's put the idea in your head." The woman nods in agreement, and she places a gentle hand on the man's. She has a wedding ring, Richard notices, but he doesn't.
Richard looks at the photograph again, the old one. "It looks like Steven to me, if that helps." He's swept with a wave of pity for these people. They're chasing a missing child. Regrettably, part of him thinks he could work that into a plot. Abduction by aliens, or faeries, or something. The Invisible Boy.
"I think I would know," says the American, and that says family, and grief, in giant letters. He looks back at Albert. "Are we done here?"
Richard says, "I hope you find him."
The woman smiles sadly. "He died."
"I'm sorry." The man nods, and they look like they're going to leave, but the woman in the kitchen has brought them all tea. She's pretty, tight braids framing a sweet face, and he thinks he might have to make a character who looks like her.
"What do you do?" she asks, putting in sugar just the way he likes.
Richard gets down his most-recently published book, and he ignores the expressions of amusement from the others. Not everyone is into the paranormal, and he's used to that. "Nathan said he didn't believe any of this stuff, either," he says, as she flips kindly through the novel, a thriller about aliens who live amongst humans, abducting and eating the homeless until the hero brings them to justice. It's not his best plot, but he's fond of the supporting characters and intends to give them their own story. "Right before he left, he joked about how he and Steven were killed by aliens and brought back to life."
The American's face is suddenly sharp. The woman with the gapped teeth says, "That's an odd joke to make."
"He was teasing me."
She takes the mobile again and stares at the photograph of Nathan and Steven. "I don't recognise him. Jack?" The American checks again, but it's with the same flat stare.
They take down information. This might be relevant to their other inquiries, the woman says, always with that same encouraging smile.
It's only when Richard tells them Nathan's birthday that the American loses his absent, hurt expression. "Say that again?"
***
Amy's Friends meet in a church hall twice a month. Ianto considers leaving Steven at home, but he's as involved in this as Ianto is. If there are other children, perhaps Steven can find a friend. He desperately needs one.
Ten people show up to drink weak tea and nibble stale biscuits. Six have met before, two others are new. Since they started meeting, they've had a maximum of twenty at once, but when newcomers discover they don't have any more answers than Amy or the Foundation did, they drift away again. There have been suicides. Ianto can't blame them. He'd be dead now if he didn't have someone to look after. There are, he notices, no other children, though he is told there were two little girls, briefly. Holly and Lilly. No-one knows where they've gone. If there were other children brought back by Amy's dream, they have since been placed by the Foundation, or they died from want of care or from despair.
One woman takes notes. "The Foundation has records," she says, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. "But I think it's nice if we know who we were." Her name used to be Sally Coke, but she's called Anne these days. After their second meeting, Ianto considers asking her out. He wants so much to connect with someone, have someone. He doesn't know how the others, the ones who don't have anyone with them, manage to survive.
He helps her clear up used paper cups and plates at the end of the meeting, but he sees Steven waiting patiently in his own folding chair, and instead Ianto thanks her for answering his questions, and he takes Steven home. Steven has already lost two lives due to Ianto's fuckups.
They skip the third meeting.
***
Amy's not in when the knock comes on their door. Rory has to seat the strangers, see the confusion on their faces. He's used to confused, lost people following her home, risen like dandelions from the cold winters of their undone deaths. She brought him back from the dead more than once. He can't object.
The dead normally don't travel in SUVs.
"What kind of people come back?" the American asks, the tall one, Call me Jack, he'd said with a smile Rory didn't believe but remembered. He has two thousand years of memories that aren't his packed inside his brain, and sometimes, it's enough to make him doubt his own sanity. He's seen a copy of this face before in a lifetime that never was.
Rory sketches in the air concepts for which he only has the most rudimentary words. "The Doctor said time was rewritten with Amy's memories, the whole world, the whole universe. But we were living in multiple realities, and we think," he flashes his eyes to Jack, "that is, I've speculated, some of the timelines overlapped, and some diverged, and they were edited back together like a movie."
The woman beside him says, "Take bits of film from one part, glue them to another."
"Exactly."
"Timeline fusion," says Jack, and there's a sorrow on his face that makes Rory pull back. "In our reality, they died, and it's not compatible with a reality where they lived."
"It's more than that," says Rory. "The crack, it pulled people in and wiped them from existence entirely. You didn't just die, you never existed, even in the memories of people who knew you."
"But we remember."
"You don't recognise them, though, do you?" This is Amy, standing in the doorway. Her hair is shorter than it used to be, and her round face tighter, but she's still the most beautiful woman Rory has ever met. "They all go home before they come to me, but nobody recognises them."
"I do," says the man standing in Jack's shadow. "But I never met either one, and I didn't know about them until recently."
"No memories to erase," says the fourth member of their team. "I knew about them both."
Amy says, "One of the women I met said it's like being a ghost inside your own life, trying to talk to the people you love, but no-one can hear you."
Rory remembers long, lonely stretches of time, decades spent with just the Pandorica for company. He remembers being ageless, deathless, friendless. He looks at Jack.
Jack says, "How do we find them?"
***
Anne asks him out for coffee, and he agrees. He's expecting a come-on, is working on his gentle let-down. Instead, she just wants a listening ear.
"And I told him, 'It's me, honey. Don't you know me? We had our honeymoon on the Isle of Man,' and he shouted at me and told me to get out." Her face is wet with tears. She had kids. They didn't know her either.
"My sister did the same thing." She'd thought he was mocking her, thought he was hitting her up for money with a cruel scam. He drinks his bad coffee. He'd give a lot for it to be laced with Retcon, to forget absolutely every day of shit since he first moved to London. No Torchwood, no Lisa, no Jack, just a do-over from the word go.
"Steven's lucky to have you."
"Christopher," he corrects her, though he's not used to calling the boy by the new name. Steven is too quiet these days. He doesn't play with the children at his new school. He doesn't talk much to Ianto.
Sometimes Ianto thinks he ought to take Steven back to the Foundation, and have them find him a proper home somewhere. Give him to someone who understands children, who can make a new place for him instead of expecting him to live on the outskirts. He reads the pain in Anne's eyes, recalling a time when she was called Sally, when she was a mum to two little girls who no longer recognise her face. She wants to be needed, to be loved. She meant to ask the lost girls to stay with her until they could reach the Foundation, but they vanished like smoke before she could. She takes a long drink of coffee when she tells him, and he sees how thin her own life is stretched, how she is also ready to snap like a string.
When she doesn't invite him back to hers, he understands, and discovers he's disappointed even though he couldn't have accepted.
He walks back home, half-daydreaming. He pictures Anne, spread out and lovely on a cream-coloured duvet. She will be warm, and soft, and smell of the light floral perfume she always wears. Her heart will speed up under his hand, placed between her breasts as he leans in for a long kiss. He won't think about three-headed monsters slavering against the glass walls of their poisoned tanks. She won't think about brilliant Christmas stars that shoot death. He will slide inside of her like he is melting. She'll call him by her husband's name when she comes, fingernails clawing into his sides. He will think of nothing at all.
It's better this way.
Steven sits in the one chair they have, staring out the window. Ianto sits as close as he can on the broken-down sofa. His old flat, back when he was alive, was nothing much, but he recalls it as a palace compared to this. Steven had lived in a nice house in a good neighbourhood, and now he has enough to eat and clothes to wear, and that's it. Last week, walking back from the shop, they passed a man Steven said looked exactly like his dad, his real dad. Steven pulled away from Ianto and ran up to him, but the man kept walking. Steven's barely spoken since then.
"Tell me," Ianto says. He reaches out and places a hand on the child's thin shoulder. He's fading, it's the only word that seems right, like a bulb gone dim, like a shirt washed too many times.
"When are you going to leave?"
"I'm not. I don't work again until the day after tomorrow."
Steven shakes his head no. "You have to move because of me. We had to leave because Richard thought you were hurting me. If you didn't have me, you could go somewhere else. You could get a good job, and not worry about sending me to school. You could get married. Anne likes you."
He puts on a comforting smile he doesn't feel. "You don't need to worry about me, Christopher."
"Steven. I don't like the name Christopher."
"All right."
"You're not my dad. Why are you taking care of me?"
"Because someone has to." It's off-hand, a joke, but the hurt in Steven's face, reflected in the dim light against the window, makes him regret the words instantly. He doesn't know the right ones to say.
"You should go."
Ianto takes the child's arm and pulls him as gently and firmly as he can to the sofa. He is no good at this. Steven is right. He'd be better off with almost anyone. But Ianto knows he's too selfish to let go. He wraps his arms around the boy, mindful of how much Steven is growing, how he'll need new clothes again soon. Steven allows the hug.
"I'm not leaving you. I'm not going to abandon you. You and I are all we have left of our old lives." He places a kiss on Steven's hair.
"Your old life made you sad. You said so."
"Did I?"
Steven nods.
"Then I suppose it's time to find a new life, yeah? A better one. And I want you there with me when I do." He starts picturing it, a real fresh start, an honest clean slate. They'll move to America, or Canada, somewhere they're unlikely to ever run into anyone they know and deal with that sharp pain ever again, somewhere the people will hear "British accent" and not know the difference. They'll find a suburb, not so big that they're lost, not so small that everyone knows everyone else, and Steven will go to a decent school and not leave it this time, and Ianto will find someone to be a good stepdad or stepmum.
To do all this, they'll need more money than Ianto is making. Their new dream means he'll have to find a better job with longer hours, or else perform a bit of illegal tinkering based on the skills he learned with Torchwood.
Thinking about it more, he decides the better job can wait until after they have the money.
***
There are hundreds of them.
Horror hits Jack over and over, in unexpected waves. The TARDIS was destroyed, and remade, and the universe cracked, and was stapled back together, and somehow hundreds, maybe a thousand people slipped back through into lives that had no room for them. The Mr Copper Foundation has records for everyone in Europe who's come to them, and God alone knows how many there are in other places. Jack thought he had enough of the dead rising, but apparently not.
It's like reading obituaries in reverse: Edward Jones died 3 May, 2007, and came back to life approximately 26 June 2010. He is settled in Sussex.
Not all of the records have the old names. Many of the returned abandoned theirs long before they found a way here. Amy sends them when she can. Others have been located through careful, targeted searching. There are places where the truly homeless wash up again. Another horror: one of the newest patients out on Flat Holm is in these records, not Rift detritus at all.
Amy remembers the man and the boy. They arrived almost at the same time, and she sent them off together. The Foundation has what could be their file. But the records lead right back into the identities of Nathan and Steven Goodwin, and they have not made contact with the Foundation since they fled.
Albert comes in with coffee from the machine; there are many things Albert doesn't do, and each one is a little reminder that Jack cannot ever replace people, only find new people to care about. Gwen and Lois have returned to Cardiff, but he needs Albert's eyes. This isn't Torchwood business.
"Thanks," Jack says, going back to his reading.
"Where to next?"
Jack flips through reports, and doesn't answer. He's looking for ghosts Amy says he can't see, and he won't let himself believe until he does. The little hope he had not been able to squelch is dying all on its own. Perhaps there are people returned from the dead, but the pair he's chasing now aren't the ones he wishes, and even on the million-to-one chance that they are, he has no way to find them. This was "next," and Jack is running out of other options. Just like before.
As Albert sits down across from him, kind in his silence, Jack closes his eyes and tries to think around the reopened griefs.
He can trade on the last of his authority and start a manhunt, though anyone with enough motivation to stay under the radar can find a way to hide. A quiet but lucrative trade exists in buying and selling false identities for fugitives foreign, domestic, and extraterrestrial, and Jack is one of the few officially-sanctioned individuals who knows what resources for the last group are available for the right price.
Once upon a time, so did his secretary.
***
There's a trick. Tosh showed him how to hack into systems: banks, stocks, businesses, government and private and international entities that straddled the two. Take what won't be missed, a few pounds here, a dollar there, but do it in bulk from thousands of accounts, and hide the dummy accounts by stealing from them as well. Transfer and hide and then transfer again until there's a web of activity with you at the centre, a fat little spider. Don't be greedy. Pick a sum, an odd number, and the moment you reach it, quit taking. Transfer funds back and then again once more. When his life was made up of falsifying records, hiding corpses, and lying to the population at large, the occasional funnelling of funds didn't register as a tremor on his moral compass.
He chooses seventy-three thousand pounds twenty-five.
In two days, he has a little over fifty thousand. Parts of his brain that have grown sluggish over the last year are waking up again, excited by the new game. Steven seems more animated this week, chatting about what he wants to do, where they're going to go. He has extracted a promise from Ianto that they will have a puppy. At tuck-in, they are reading The Plague Dogs though Ianto is beginning to regret the choice.
Ianto sets his old life to rest as he collects their escape money. He buys flowers for Lisa's grave, the false one here in London rather than the real one buried under tonnes of debris in Cardiff. He sends more to Tosh's. He doesn't sign either bouquet. He sends a stuffed animal, a little red dragon, to Gwen's address for her daughter. His own family would have received the payout from his death some time ago, and an extravagant gift will only invite questions about stolen goods.
There's no good way to tell someone, "I will love you forever even if you don't remember who I am." He doesn't send anything else.
The work on their passports is shoddy, he thinks with an eye well-suited to forgery, but he lacks the resources to do better. He purchases two tickets to New York. They can go anywhere from that point, or settle near the city if they choose. Ianto's never been outside of Europe and he thinks it might be nice to travel, taking photographs of Steven against the backdrop of famous monuments as they both pull faces for the camera. Fifteen years from now, when Steven brings home some girl or boy to meet his dad, they can bring out the photos as proudly as they would a baby book: this is where our life together really started.
Ianto heads to work with a smile on his face. When he comes home and checks the dummy account he bought the flowers with, he finds it frozen. With a sinking feeling, he checks the other accounts. Four have been suspended, though not the one he used to buy their tickets. That leaves two accounts with less then three thousand pounds between them.
It'll have to be enough. He walks to the banks, and with a nervous smile for the tellers, closes both accounts. No, he hasn't any problems with the bank's service. Yes, his record shows he's been a member for seven years. He and his son will be moving to America. He has a job offer there.
There are police cars already outside when he returns to the block. Ianto keeps walking, smiling amiably when one of the policemen catches his eye. He doesn't run. He does regret the loss of the last of Steven's toys as he walks casually to the school and signs Christopher out for a doctor's appointment.
"You're supposed to send a note," says the receptionist, as she calls down to the classroom.
"Sorry," Ianto says. "I forgot."
***
Part Three
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Ianto, Steven, Jack, Gwen, various Who and TW characters, OCs
Pairings: canon pairings, Ianto/OMC, past Ianto/others
Rating: R
Words: 13,000 (3,800 this part)
Warnings: child endangerment, mentions of child abuse, emo as hell, wtfpresenttense
Spoilers: TW: CoE, DW: The Big Bang (written before series 6 premiered, mentions the gender of Gwen's baby)
Betas: fide_et_spe and humantales
Summary: Brought back by Amy but unable to return home, Ianto and Steven attempt to build a new life.
AN: Sequel to Strays. Familiarity with that story is not required to read this one. (That one was Ianto/Amy porn. This is what happens next.)
Part One
***
Part Two
***
The weather is changing, and all Ianto's allergies are happy to describe every pressure difference. Some days are so thick and grey, he thinks he must still be dead, but red eyes and a runny nose are sure signs he's in the land of the reluctantly living.
They have come to London, although it is exorbitantly expensive, because Ianto knows the places where he can purchase false names with the last of their money. Not all the immigrants to Britain, from other countries or other planets, want to live with their old identities. Torchwood kept track of the gatekeepers, the paper-peddlers who could open doors. By the end of things, when it was just the three of them left, the best they could do (Jack said) was to make sure there weren't too many unknown visitors, that the alien underworld self-policed the regular difficulties amongst newcomers to the area. Now they are the newcomers, Lloyd and Christopher Fellowes.
He works in a shop for very little. Steven has started at a new school, though he's behind in everything, and they have to sit together at the table every night until it's half-past late, doing his homework and catching him up.
They've been in their tiny flat for a week when Ianto sees the bill posted. "Feeling lost? Life not what you expected when you got back to it? Contact Amy's Friends." There's a number.
***
The handsome man has friends with him, and they make Richard's dining room look tiny as he finds seats. It was cosy before, he thinks, just right for two people and perhaps a child, and then he pushes that thought away again.
"You're not with the police," he says. Behind him, one of the women has made herself at home, rummaging through his kitchen for the makings of tea.
"We work with them from time to time, but no, we're not on their payroll." He's American. The man reaches into his wallet and pulls out a photograph. He stares for a moment longer than a policeman would, before handing it to Richard like something valuable.
"The report came over the wire," says the second woman, the one who's sitting with them at the table. She's got a friendly, gapped grin that makes him want to share. "You reported a child missing, possibly endangered."
Richard looks at the snap. It looks a lot like the boy who spent the night a month ago. He takes out his own mobile, and searches for a picture he took of Nathan and Steven. "This was them."
The man takes the mobile, and then passes it to the woman. They both shake their heads.
The second man is standing behind the woman's chair. He's thin, and young, and he looks like he's had too many arguments in his life. He takes the mobile and looks hard at the snap. "I'm telling you, it's the same child. And I think I've seen that bloke somewhere before."
"On a 'Wanted' poster, maybe," says the handsome man. "I don't see it, Albert. I think you read the name, and it's put the idea in your head." The woman nods in agreement, and she places a gentle hand on the man's. She has a wedding ring, Richard notices, but he doesn't.
Richard looks at the photograph again, the old one. "It looks like Steven to me, if that helps." He's swept with a wave of pity for these people. They're chasing a missing child. Regrettably, part of him thinks he could work that into a plot. Abduction by aliens, or faeries, or something. The Invisible Boy.
"I think I would know," says the American, and that says family, and grief, in giant letters. He looks back at Albert. "Are we done here?"
Richard says, "I hope you find him."
The woman smiles sadly. "He died."
"I'm sorry." The man nods, and they look like they're going to leave, but the woman in the kitchen has brought them all tea. She's pretty, tight braids framing a sweet face, and he thinks he might have to make a character who looks like her.
"What do you do?" she asks, putting in sugar just the way he likes.
Richard gets down his most-recently published book, and he ignores the expressions of amusement from the others. Not everyone is into the paranormal, and he's used to that. "Nathan said he didn't believe any of this stuff, either," he says, as she flips kindly through the novel, a thriller about aliens who live amongst humans, abducting and eating the homeless until the hero brings them to justice. It's not his best plot, but he's fond of the supporting characters and intends to give them their own story. "Right before he left, he joked about how he and Steven were killed by aliens and brought back to life."
The American's face is suddenly sharp. The woman with the gapped teeth says, "That's an odd joke to make."
"He was teasing me."
She takes the mobile again and stares at the photograph of Nathan and Steven. "I don't recognise him. Jack?" The American checks again, but it's with the same flat stare.
They take down information. This might be relevant to their other inquiries, the woman says, always with that same encouraging smile.
It's only when Richard tells them Nathan's birthday that the American loses his absent, hurt expression. "Say that again?"
***
Amy's Friends meet in a church hall twice a month. Ianto considers leaving Steven at home, but he's as involved in this as Ianto is. If there are other children, perhaps Steven can find a friend. He desperately needs one.
Ten people show up to drink weak tea and nibble stale biscuits. Six have met before, two others are new. Since they started meeting, they've had a maximum of twenty at once, but when newcomers discover they don't have any more answers than Amy or the Foundation did, they drift away again. There have been suicides. Ianto can't blame them. He'd be dead now if he didn't have someone to look after. There are, he notices, no other children, though he is told there were two little girls, briefly. Holly and Lilly. No-one knows where they've gone. If there were other children brought back by Amy's dream, they have since been placed by the Foundation, or they died from want of care or from despair.
One woman takes notes. "The Foundation has records," she says, tucking her dark hair behind her ear. "But I think it's nice if we know who we were." Her name used to be Sally Coke, but she's called Anne these days. After their second meeting, Ianto considers asking her out. He wants so much to connect with someone, have someone. He doesn't know how the others, the ones who don't have anyone with them, manage to survive.
He helps her clear up used paper cups and plates at the end of the meeting, but he sees Steven waiting patiently in his own folding chair, and instead Ianto thanks her for answering his questions, and he takes Steven home. Steven has already lost two lives due to Ianto's fuckups.
They skip the third meeting.
***
Amy's not in when the knock comes on their door. Rory has to seat the strangers, see the confusion on their faces. He's used to confused, lost people following her home, risen like dandelions from the cold winters of their undone deaths. She brought him back from the dead more than once. He can't object.
The dead normally don't travel in SUVs.
"What kind of people come back?" the American asks, the tall one, Call me Jack, he'd said with a smile Rory didn't believe but remembered. He has two thousand years of memories that aren't his packed inside his brain, and sometimes, it's enough to make him doubt his own sanity. He's seen a copy of this face before in a lifetime that never was.
Rory sketches in the air concepts for which he only has the most rudimentary words. "The Doctor said time was rewritten with Amy's memories, the whole world, the whole universe. But we were living in multiple realities, and we think," he flashes his eyes to Jack, "that is, I've speculated, some of the timelines overlapped, and some diverged, and they were edited back together like a movie."
The woman beside him says, "Take bits of film from one part, glue them to another."
"Exactly."
"Timeline fusion," says Jack, and there's a sorrow on his face that makes Rory pull back. "In our reality, they died, and it's not compatible with a reality where they lived."
"It's more than that," says Rory. "The crack, it pulled people in and wiped them from existence entirely. You didn't just die, you never existed, even in the memories of people who knew you."
"But we remember."
"You don't recognise them, though, do you?" This is Amy, standing in the doorway. Her hair is shorter than it used to be, and her round face tighter, but she's still the most beautiful woman Rory has ever met. "They all go home before they come to me, but nobody recognises them."
"I do," says the man standing in Jack's shadow. "But I never met either one, and I didn't know about them until recently."
"No memories to erase," says the fourth member of their team. "I knew about them both."
Amy says, "One of the women I met said it's like being a ghost inside your own life, trying to talk to the people you love, but no-one can hear you."
Rory remembers long, lonely stretches of time, decades spent with just the Pandorica for company. He remembers being ageless, deathless, friendless. He looks at Jack.
Jack says, "How do we find them?"
***
Anne asks him out for coffee, and he agrees. He's expecting a come-on, is working on his gentle let-down. Instead, she just wants a listening ear.
"And I told him, 'It's me, honey. Don't you know me? We had our honeymoon on the Isle of Man,' and he shouted at me and told me to get out." Her face is wet with tears. She had kids. They didn't know her either.
"My sister did the same thing." She'd thought he was mocking her, thought he was hitting her up for money with a cruel scam. He drinks his bad coffee. He'd give a lot for it to be laced with Retcon, to forget absolutely every day of shit since he first moved to London. No Torchwood, no Lisa, no Jack, just a do-over from the word go.
"Steven's lucky to have you."
"Christopher," he corrects her, though he's not used to calling the boy by the new name. Steven is too quiet these days. He doesn't play with the children at his new school. He doesn't talk much to Ianto.
Sometimes Ianto thinks he ought to take Steven back to the Foundation, and have them find him a proper home somewhere. Give him to someone who understands children, who can make a new place for him instead of expecting him to live on the outskirts. He reads the pain in Anne's eyes, recalling a time when she was called Sally, when she was a mum to two little girls who no longer recognise her face. She wants to be needed, to be loved. She meant to ask the lost girls to stay with her until they could reach the Foundation, but they vanished like smoke before she could. She takes a long drink of coffee when she tells him, and he sees how thin her own life is stretched, how she is also ready to snap like a string.
When she doesn't invite him back to hers, he understands, and discovers he's disappointed even though he couldn't have accepted.
He walks back home, half-daydreaming. He pictures Anne, spread out and lovely on a cream-coloured duvet. She will be warm, and soft, and smell of the light floral perfume she always wears. Her heart will speed up under his hand, placed between her breasts as he leans in for a long kiss. He won't think about three-headed monsters slavering against the glass walls of their poisoned tanks. She won't think about brilliant Christmas stars that shoot death. He will slide inside of her like he is melting. She'll call him by her husband's name when she comes, fingernails clawing into his sides. He will think of nothing at all.
It's better this way.
Steven sits in the one chair they have, staring out the window. Ianto sits as close as he can on the broken-down sofa. His old flat, back when he was alive, was nothing much, but he recalls it as a palace compared to this. Steven had lived in a nice house in a good neighbourhood, and now he has enough to eat and clothes to wear, and that's it. Last week, walking back from the shop, they passed a man Steven said looked exactly like his dad, his real dad. Steven pulled away from Ianto and ran up to him, but the man kept walking. Steven's barely spoken since then.
"Tell me," Ianto says. He reaches out and places a hand on the child's thin shoulder. He's fading, it's the only word that seems right, like a bulb gone dim, like a shirt washed too many times.
"When are you going to leave?"
"I'm not. I don't work again until the day after tomorrow."
Steven shakes his head no. "You have to move because of me. We had to leave because Richard thought you were hurting me. If you didn't have me, you could go somewhere else. You could get a good job, and not worry about sending me to school. You could get married. Anne likes you."
He puts on a comforting smile he doesn't feel. "You don't need to worry about me, Christopher."
"Steven. I don't like the name Christopher."
"All right."
"You're not my dad. Why are you taking care of me?"
"Because someone has to." It's off-hand, a joke, but the hurt in Steven's face, reflected in the dim light against the window, makes him regret the words instantly. He doesn't know the right ones to say.
"You should go."
Ianto takes the child's arm and pulls him as gently and firmly as he can to the sofa. He is no good at this. Steven is right. He'd be better off with almost anyone. But Ianto knows he's too selfish to let go. He wraps his arms around the boy, mindful of how much Steven is growing, how he'll need new clothes again soon. Steven allows the hug.
"I'm not leaving you. I'm not going to abandon you. You and I are all we have left of our old lives." He places a kiss on Steven's hair.
"Your old life made you sad. You said so."
"Did I?"
Steven nods.
"Then I suppose it's time to find a new life, yeah? A better one. And I want you there with me when I do." He starts picturing it, a real fresh start, an honest clean slate. They'll move to America, or Canada, somewhere they're unlikely to ever run into anyone they know and deal with that sharp pain ever again, somewhere the people will hear "British accent" and not know the difference. They'll find a suburb, not so big that they're lost, not so small that everyone knows everyone else, and Steven will go to a decent school and not leave it this time, and Ianto will find someone to be a good stepdad or stepmum.
To do all this, they'll need more money than Ianto is making. Their new dream means he'll have to find a better job with longer hours, or else perform a bit of illegal tinkering based on the skills he learned with Torchwood.
Thinking about it more, he decides the better job can wait until after they have the money.
***
There are hundreds of them.
Horror hits Jack over and over, in unexpected waves. The TARDIS was destroyed, and remade, and the universe cracked, and was stapled back together, and somehow hundreds, maybe a thousand people slipped back through into lives that had no room for them. The Mr Copper Foundation has records for everyone in Europe who's come to them, and God alone knows how many there are in other places. Jack thought he had enough of the dead rising, but apparently not.
It's like reading obituaries in reverse: Edward Jones died 3 May, 2007, and came back to life approximately 26 June 2010. He is settled in Sussex.
Not all of the records have the old names. Many of the returned abandoned theirs long before they found a way here. Amy sends them when she can. Others have been located through careful, targeted searching. There are places where the truly homeless wash up again. Another horror: one of the newest patients out on Flat Holm is in these records, not Rift detritus at all.
Amy remembers the man and the boy. They arrived almost at the same time, and she sent them off together. The Foundation has what could be their file. But the records lead right back into the identities of Nathan and Steven Goodwin, and they have not made contact with the Foundation since they fled.
Albert comes in with coffee from the machine; there are many things Albert doesn't do, and each one is a little reminder that Jack cannot ever replace people, only find new people to care about. Gwen and Lois have returned to Cardiff, but he needs Albert's eyes. This isn't Torchwood business.
"Thanks," Jack says, going back to his reading.
"Where to next?"
Jack flips through reports, and doesn't answer. He's looking for ghosts Amy says he can't see, and he won't let himself believe until he does. The little hope he had not been able to squelch is dying all on its own. Perhaps there are people returned from the dead, but the pair he's chasing now aren't the ones he wishes, and even on the million-to-one chance that they are, he has no way to find them. This was "next," and Jack is running out of other options. Just like before.
As Albert sits down across from him, kind in his silence, Jack closes his eyes and tries to think around the reopened griefs.
He can trade on the last of his authority and start a manhunt, though anyone with enough motivation to stay under the radar can find a way to hide. A quiet but lucrative trade exists in buying and selling false identities for fugitives foreign, domestic, and extraterrestrial, and Jack is one of the few officially-sanctioned individuals who knows what resources for the last group are available for the right price.
Once upon a time, so did his secretary.
***
There's a trick. Tosh showed him how to hack into systems: banks, stocks, businesses, government and private and international entities that straddled the two. Take what won't be missed, a few pounds here, a dollar there, but do it in bulk from thousands of accounts, and hide the dummy accounts by stealing from them as well. Transfer and hide and then transfer again until there's a web of activity with you at the centre, a fat little spider. Don't be greedy. Pick a sum, an odd number, and the moment you reach it, quit taking. Transfer funds back and then again once more. When his life was made up of falsifying records, hiding corpses, and lying to the population at large, the occasional funnelling of funds didn't register as a tremor on his moral compass.
He chooses seventy-three thousand pounds twenty-five.
In two days, he has a little over fifty thousand. Parts of his brain that have grown sluggish over the last year are waking up again, excited by the new game. Steven seems more animated this week, chatting about what he wants to do, where they're going to go. He has extracted a promise from Ianto that they will have a puppy. At tuck-in, they are reading The Plague Dogs though Ianto is beginning to regret the choice.
Ianto sets his old life to rest as he collects their escape money. He buys flowers for Lisa's grave, the false one here in London rather than the real one buried under tonnes of debris in Cardiff. He sends more to Tosh's. He doesn't sign either bouquet. He sends a stuffed animal, a little red dragon, to Gwen's address for her daughter. His own family would have received the payout from his death some time ago, and an extravagant gift will only invite questions about stolen goods.
There's no good way to tell someone, "I will love you forever even if you don't remember who I am." He doesn't send anything else.
The work on their passports is shoddy, he thinks with an eye well-suited to forgery, but he lacks the resources to do better. He purchases two tickets to New York. They can go anywhere from that point, or settle near the city if they choose. Ianto's never been outside of Europe and he thinks it might be nice to travel, taking photographs of Steven against the backdrop of famous monuments as they both pull faces for the camera. Fifteen years from now, when Steven brings home some girl or boy to meet his dad, they can bring out the photos as proudly as they would a baby book: this is where our life together really started.
Ianto heads to work with a smile on his face. When he comes home and checks the dummy account he bought the flowers with, he finds it frozen. With a sinking feeling, he checks the other accounts. Four have been suspended, though not the one he used to buy their tickets. That leaves two accounts with less then three thousand pounds between them.
It'll have to be enough. He walks to the banks, and with a nervous smile for the tellers, closes both accounts. No, he hasn't any problems with the bank's service. Yes, his record shows he's been a member for seven years. He and his son will be moving to America. He has a job offer there.
There are police cars already outside when he returns to the block. Ianto keeps walking, smiling amiably when one of the policemen catches his eye. He doesn't run. He does regret the loss of the last of Steven's toys as he walks casually to the school and signs Christopher out for a doctor's appointment.
"You're supposed to send a note," says the receptionist, as she calls down to the classroom.
"Sorry," Ianto says. "I forgot."
***
Part Three