Jack’s and Ianto’s Private Archives - Season 2 -15/28 part 3 - 03/08
Title: Jack’s and Ianto’s Private Archives - Season 2 -15/28
Fandom: Torchwood
Part 3: A Matter of Trust 03/08
POV: from Jack’s point of view.
Characters/pairings: Jack/Ianto and Owen and Lord Henry Lothian.
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Jack retconned Ianto, and with Owen’s help, he took him home. While they searched Ianto’s flat, Jack got a phone call from an old friend and former lover.
Disclaimer: The usual, I don’t own what you’ll be able to recognize, the rest is all mine.
Beta: czarina_kitty
Jack spent most of the night working on Mainframe, while Owen spent it looking incredulously through the Torchwood 1 archives now at his disposal. The whole thing - not the mere scratches they’d saved after the motherhouse fell.
“How did he manage to rescue all this?” he asked Jack.
“It was never a rescue. He loaded Torchwood 1’s database onto the internet. It could have taken months ... just as it took months for Mainframe to recover it all...”
“But to what end? Why steal data from London only to come and hide it here?”
“Good question.” Jack sighed before adding, "What do you think I’m looking for?”
“Whatever. Hacking London’s database under Hartman’s very nose, hats off! That’s called having balls!”
“If you say so,” Jack snorted. “While hacking our security system and introducing a cyberman under our noses was... what was it, Owen? Remind me?” he retorted. Somehow, Ianto's exploits weren’t amusing to him at all right now.
Sometime earlier, he called Tosh and told her to take three days off to go visit her grandfather, as her mother was visiting him in London...
“What are you not telling me Jack?” Owen inquired. It was somewhat surprising that Jack would send Tosh away while their available staff was already reduced by two.
“They organized some sort of court martial, just for me,” he started to explain. “Someone will come and pick me up shortly.”
“They send someone to look for you? Jack this place is defended,” Owen began. “Don’t tell me you think Ianto would have sabotaged--”
“No, he didn’t. I checked. The security system is fully operational. And I reconfigured Mainframe to enable the self-destruction in case of any kind of intrusion,” Jack replied. He added, “I won’t let them retrieve Mainframe or the data she is holding (*), or get their hands on you.”
“Thank you for your compassion, it goes straight to my heart!” Owen replied acerbically.
“Trust me on this, Owen--”
“I know! You're right. I really don’t want to fall into their hands either, Jack. But what about you?”
“I don’t intend to go without a fight, believe me. And most of all, I won’t let them put me back in a cage,” he said with a large grin, but he lacked the infuriating confidence he usually displayed.
“And what about Ianto, did you think of something?”Owen asked.
“Let’s hope for his sake that his girlfriend loves vegetables and goldfish,” Jack joked without much conviction.
At noon, Lord Henry Lothian’s limousine was waiting for him by the water column. Jack settled in the back seat by his old friend, and waited until the driver closed the glass partition before talking.
“So, what’s the program?” he joked.
The old lord looked deadly serious, impersonating the perfect gentlemen he was supposed to be completely. But to Jack, who knew him well, he was clearly uncomfortable. Was that because of the strange request Henry had made the year before?
“This isn’t good Jack. Not good at all!” Henry replied, handing him three files.
Jack went through them absently, like it didn’t matter, but one glance at a page was all he needed to read it. And Henry was of the few who knew this. “Is that it?” he said closing the file.
“It seems to me more than enough, don’t you think? And what's with that undead story?”
“Undead? Where is there an undead?” Jack said pretending to search the records, knowing very well Henry won’t buy it, just wanting to annoy him.
“Jack stop! Seriously?” Henry insisted, still deadly serious.
“Henry, you can’t be serious ... undead?” Jack bluffed. How could they possibly know about Owen? That was worse than he expected. “Who will be attending the party?” he asked, still as if he wasn’t taking it seriously.
“MacGregor and Stetson from UNIT, Orwell from the Chamber, Johnson from the government--”
“Wow, what a party, and just for me!”
“A representative of the Shadow will be there, too.”
“The Shadow? I was told Saxon had Shut them down?? Didn’t he?”
“The organization lost most of its leaders. All in fact,” Henry replied. “But it seems even more zealous youth took over.”
The Shadow always attracted Jack’s sympathy. An organization consisting of a handful of men fighting against corruption and abuse of power within the untouchables. The armies, the politicians, MI5 and UNIT were regularly in their sights. In short, they were idealists, utopians. No wonder they were the first victims of the Saxon era.
“I know the Shadow declared war on Torchwood, but it was about London and Torchwood 1. They were never interested in Cardiff, or in me in fact,” he pointed out to Henry.
“The only thing I know, Jack, is they have sought and obtained a right of veto in this particular case,” replied the old lord.
“And what is your part in this?” Jack asked.
“I’m just trying to help an old friend. I’m well aware not to have been very pleasant with you recently,” replied Henry in a clear reference to the heart he requested from Jack. “I'm sorry, Jack. I should never have asked you that, knowing what you’ve been through.”
“If it could have saved her, I would have done it, Henry. Believe me ...” Jack replied, sincerely before taking a lighter tone to joke, “Not that I enjoyed being butchered at all, but, hey! You’re my friend. You didn’t answer my question by the way.”
“I don’t need to tell you they forgot to send me an invitation when they decided paint a target on you.”
“I would have expected that,” Jack admitted.
“Do you remember Amy, my sister’s daughter?”
“Rhetorical question, I suppose?” Jack replied quite surprised to have Amy brought up in this discussion. Especially as he’d almost forgotten the girl Ianto was seeing was Henry’s niece.
“Of course,” the old lord conceded before explaining. “As it happens, Amy has set her mind to marry a gold digger, a trickster... a lost dog without a collar, which her brother Thomas took pity on, back when they were still in school, and to whom I was wrong to open my home.”
Jack was struck by this; Ianto and Amy planned to get married. He would never have guessed this. What the hell Ianto was thinking?
“I still don’t know what this little shit is fiddling with, but somehow, he found himself in possession of confidential information. And more than that, he was claiming to work for the Home Office. Well, while investigating that kid, I discovered what was planned against you, and I came to warn you--”
“And that guy, what was his part? Do you know?” Jack asked.
“Him? Oh, as far as I know, none! In fact I didn’t find anything at all. It was as if he’d ceased to exist when he left school,” Henry replied.
“That doesn’t seem to bother you that much,” Jack pointed out.
“Actually, the case seems to be closed,” the old lord concluded.
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“Well, yesterday morning, that young rascal just showed up at the manor to tell Amy he wasn’t going to marry her. Said he was in love with someone else, and guess what? His new target is a man.”
“---”
“Probably very rich and very old, but that’s not my concern anymore,” Henry concluded, handing Jack a glass of bourbon. The Captain drank it, bottoms up.
Ianto broke up with Amy ... and that just before he turned him into a vegetable -- Ianto really had intended to settle thing between them. Jack was devastated. Ianto was right; he was definitely not up to par. Since he had returned from the Valliant, he was just making mistakes -- Ianto was alone, abandoned, vulnerable, and nobody would come to his rescue...
(*) For Jack, Mainframe is like a ship, this is told in another fic...
First chapter of the Archives season one here on LJ and Master list of both seasons here
Continued...