Title: Suspension 2/7
Authors:
leofuller and
the9thdoctor Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: 15ish
Spoilers: Season 1 only - This is our Post-Cyberwoman fic!
Summary: Every decision made changes the future. For better or worse, Ianto wakes up in a universe where he never had a chance to hide Lisa in the basement - A universe where he died in the wreckage of Canary Wharf and somebody else went to Cardiff with a deadly secret...
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
“This is…” Ianto had run out of synonyms for ‘weird’. He stared round the coffee shop. He’d passed it every day on his way to work, but he hadn’t exactly had time to fritter away over a hot drink. When he hadn’t been working he’d been keeping Lisa company, or distracting Jack from what was going on in the basement. When he did leave the Hub it was for a few hours of much-needed oblivion amongst the boxes and rented furniture, and not for espresso or latte in an independent coffee house. He found himself thinking that this could quickly become a regular haunt of his, whether in this universe or his own.
“I know.” Paul smiled. The others had gone back to the Hub to deal with something that had shown up on Tosh’s scans, leaving Paul to rectify the fact that Ianto had nothing but the clothes on his back. They’d been shopping for clothes and essentials, and now they’d settled into armchairs in a corner of the coffee shops, surrounded by bags and the awkward atmosphere of two men who both thought that other one should be dead.
Ianto tried to cover his embarrassment by taking a sip of his coffee.
“So...” he said, trying to think of a way of starting a conversation.
“So...” agreed Paul.
Ianto bit his lip. “Look, okay, I'm in some kind of parallel universe. I get that, and I've seen the films, so shouldn't we work out what's different or something?”
“You think it's something to do with me?” asked Paul.
“Well, everything else seems to be the same - same team and everything, you're the only thing that's different between the two.”
“Because I'm dead in your world?”
Ianto nodded. “And I'm dead in this one.”
Paul put his coffee cup down carefully. “Okay. Cards on the table.” he said, “I knew you at Torchwood One. We worked on a couple of projects together. We weren't too close, but I knew you well enough to invite you to my 25th.”
Ianto nodded, “You booked a room above a pub in Compton Street. Abigail Norton got pissed and tried to give you a lap dance.”
Paul grinned. “So far so good, then. Alright, what else... Uh, you had a girlfriend called... uh... Louise?”
“Lisa.” Ianto replied quietly.
“She was one of the Lab Rats?”
Ianto managed to smile. Obviously the nickname amongst the junior staff for the scientific departments was the same in this universe.
“She was a chemical analyst.”
“Died in the battle?” Paul asked softly, picking up that Ianto referred to his girlfriend in the past tense.
Ianto nodded. He wasn’t about to tell Paul the full truth. If he had left his life behind him, there was no need to tell everybody about one of his biggest mistakes.
“How did you come to work for Cardiff?” He asked instead. “I mean, returning to Wales was a fairly obvious move for me, but you’re from…?”
“Colchester.” Paul confirmed.
“You didn't want to return?”
Paul shook his head. “God no.” he said with a laugh. “I spent twenty years trying to get the hell out of there...” he shrugged. “I couldn't think of anything else to do, to be honest with you. I'd heard about Torchwood Three and thought I might get a job.”
Ianto raised an eyebrow, recalling his own attempts to get Jack to offer him a job. Paul really didn't seem the type to hang around parks in tight jeans, but surely Jack hadn't just welcomed him with open arms?
He bit his lip again. “How?” he asked.
“How did I get a job?” Paul said, looking up. “I had something Jack wanted.”
Ianto almost choked on his coffee. “And... and what was that?” he spluttered.
“The hand.” Paul replied, as though it was obvious. “Doesn't he have that in your world?”
“The hand in the jar?”
Paul nodded. “I found it in Canary Wharf... Looked interesting. It was a bit of luck... Jack offered me a job right then and there.”
Ianto nodded sadly. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed that he had missed a trick or not. What would his life have been like if he had done the same as Paul?
He was disturbed from his thoughts by Paul.
“So, how did you get a job without the hand?”
“I asked him to help me capture a pterodactyl.”
It was Paul’s turn to splutter into his coffee.
“A pterodactyl?”
Ianto grinned. “She was in a warehouse down by the docks. I’d been trying to get Jack to hire me, and I found her at just the right time.”
“I guess that if either of us had been gay it would have been no trouble at all to get in.” Paul shrugged. “Jack’s pretty predictable when faced with somebody attractive.”
It occurred to Ianto that he’d forgotten how egotistical Paul could be.
“Not that predictable…” Ianto muttered.
Paul raised an eyebrow. “Did you try that?” He asked in disbelief.
Ianto blushed. Paul’s jaw dropped.
“Hey, are you and Jack…?”
Ianto shook his head. “Not really. I’d rather that Jack here didn’t know…”
Paul shrugged again. “Whatever.”
Ianto was quiet for a while, trying to sort out his own feelings. The Jack here was not the same man that he had almost tried to seduce - there was nothing between them. Not that Ianto was naïve enough to think that there was anything between him and Jack back in 'his' world - it had just been sex, a distraction, and now that Lisa was dead and Jack had held a gun to his head, Ianto was sure that even if he ever managed to get back there, the whatever-it-had-been would be over.
That thought made him feel empty. What had been a distraction for Jack had changed over the months that Lisa had been hidden into something closer to a distraction for Ianto.
The more he thought about it, the more he thought that he might possibly miss the feeling of being close to someone, if only for an hour or so.
The Jack in this world had never held him close enough for Ianto to feel his heartbeat and the Jack in the other world would surely never allow him to do it again.
Ianto suddenly recognised the feeling inside of him as one of intense loss.
“So…” Paul said as the silence threatened to stretch on. “If we’re going to work out the point when our universes diverged, I suppose we should work out when the differences started.”
“Well, if I died at the battle of Canary Wharf, then your death came first…” Ianto said.
Paul looked uncomfortable, which was understandable given the topic of conversation.
“That might not be it.”
“But… Mark Johnson applied to become a field agent after you… which created a vacancy for a researcher. I was on secondment to the research team when the battle happened, and the only reason the cybermen didn’t find me was because I was down in the lower levels of the archives looking for something specific.” He straightened the sugar packets on his saucer and avoided looking at Paul. “So I suppose if you hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have survived.”
Paul's eyes widened. “I guess that makes sense,” he admitted. “One change and all that... Can I ask... I mean, do you know how I died? And that is SO not a question I ever thought I'd have to ask.”
Ianto drummed his fingers on his mug. It wasn't as though he was giving anything away, but he still felt uncomfortable talking about it.
“Remember the retrieval mission to the Dales?” he asked finally.
Paul, who had been just about to take a sip of coffee, dropped the mug. It shattered on the wood floor and dark coffee spilt out. “Shit!” yelled Paul.
Ianto sat back and watched Paul as a waitress hurried over to pick up the shards of china and mop up the spill. Paul was shaking.
“The Dales?” he mumbled, when the waitress had finally cleaned up and bustled off back behind the counter. “That was when? In the Dales?”
Ianto nodded, wondering why this was having such a big effect on Paul. “It went horribly wrong.”
“What… what happened?”
Ianto frowned. He’d been in on the briefing, but he’d had nothing to do with the aftermath. “I believe that the tranquilliser didn’t work and the alien got angry. It killed three agents before they managed to destroy it.”
Paul shook his head. “Everything was fine. It was so normal that I don’t even remember the exact details...”
The moment was shattered by Paul’s mobile beeping. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the screen.
“It’s Jack. We need to go back to the Hub.”
Everything back at the Hub was normal. Owen was swearing as he struggled with an alien corpse. Tosh was ignoring everybody, tapping data into her computer. Gwen and Jack were in Jack’s office, yelling at each other.
Ianto paused inside the cog door and smiled. Almost like being home. Only without the secret in the basement.
“Right.” Paul stood next to Ianto and surveyed the chaos in the Hub. “I’ll help Owen…”
“I’ll make coffee.”
The big coffee machine, which had been in the Hub longer than Ianto, was hidden behind a collection of plant pots and assorted paraphernalia and covered in dust. Ianto found a dishcloth by the sink and cleaned it quickly but thoroughly, before locating a bag of coffee beans amongst his bags of shopping and starting a brew.
He delivered the coffee on autopilot, Tosh glanced up at him as he put the mug on her desk and gave him a small smile. Ianto had to stop himself from laughing. A version of Tosh who didn't even know who he was was paying more attention to him delivering coffee than the one who did. Owen peered into his mug suspiciously when Ianto handed it over, as though he was expecting it to be booby-trapped.
“Three sugars and whole-fat milk.” Ianto informed him. “Just how you like it.”
Owen sniffed the mug. “Yeah...” he said, “Thanks...”
Ianto rolled his eyes and went to deliver Gwen and Jack's coffee.
He knocked on the office door - they were both still arguing in there, and he didn't want to interrupt. Back home - back before Lisa, he would have walked straight in regardless of the noise, but this wasn't home and maybe they would think it was one step too far from the mysterious guy who had turned up out of the blue and claimed to work with them.
Besides, he could hear his name being mentioned.
The arguing stopped as soon as he knocked, and they both turned to look at him. Gwen smiled. Jack didn’t.
“Coffee?” Ianto asked. Gwen took two steps forward, and reached to take her favourite mug. She paused and looked at Ianto. He nodded. “Milk, no sugar.” She smiled again and took the drink.
“Sir?” Ianto approached Jack with the tray and one remaining mug, the stripy one he always gave Jack.
Jack eyed him warily, but took the offered mug.
It had been the hardest drink to make. The others were fairly predictable in their tastes and had clear favourites that he could make for this first round, but Jack drank different things every time, he drank whatever Ianto made and said it was perfect. Ianto had settled for his special blend, black, with no sugar.
Jack inhaled the steam, took a mouthful of the coffee, and gave Ianto the first genuine smile since he’d arrived at the flat that morning.
Ianto relaxed fractionally at that, but the message behind it was clear. It was the same smile that Jack had given him all those months ago in the park. It was a smile that said 'I have no idea who you are or what you're doing here, but I like the way you look'. Ianto hadn't seen it directed at him since he had first come to work in the Hub.
He lowered the tray to his side. “Is there anything else you would like me to do, sir?”
“He calls you 'sir',” squealed Gwen, “That's brilliant.”
Ianto sighed, and Jack just raised an eyebrow.
“Well,” he said, “I'm not sure what we could give you to do. I mean, what if you're a psychic alien bent on world domination?”
“I'm certainly not.” said Ianto, feeling slightly put out.
“Yeah, well, I'm still not going to let you just poke about with our computer system, am I?”
Ianto nodded. He expected something like that, but it still hurt to hear it out loud. “I could man the information centre...” he said, hopefully. Anything to keep himself busy right now would be welcome, never mind what it was.
Jack shrugged. “You're welcome to it.” he said, “I don't think anyone's been up there for weeks.”
It looked very likely that nobody had been up here for weeks, Ianto agreed as he stood in the middle of the tourist office with his hands on his hips. And when they HAD been here, they hadn’t been cleaning. He checked under the desk, not at all surprised to find that the same untouched cleaning supplies that had been in his tourist office on his first day were sitting in a dusty blue plastic box.
Ianto sighed, took off his suit jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and set to work.
“Why don’t you trust him?” Gwen perched on the edge of Jack’s desk, and joined him in watching Ianto on the CCTV.
“Why do you?”
“Because he knows all about us, and he looked so lost.”
Jack looked up at her. “And that's exactly why I don't trust him.” he replied.
Gwen looked surprised at that and thought for a while before continuing. “Jack?” she asked.
“Uh-huh?”
“What did he say to you? When he was telling us about everyone, he left you until last and whispered something to you.”
Jack nodded and turned back to the CCTV. Ianto was scrubbing the desk with a look of deep distaste.
Gwen had been expecting a reply. “What did he say?” she repeated.
Jack sighed. “He told me something that I wouldn't tell anyone.” he said finally. “Something that I've never told anyone. He knows about your home life and Owen's disgusting food preferences. Okay, I can work with that. He might well work for Torchwood Three in some other universe, but the things he told me... Well... it's making me think, that's all.”
“Think that he's not who he says he is?” Gwen asked.
Jack shook his head. “He might very well be exactly who he says he is,” he replied, slowly, “It's who he thinks I am that's worrying me.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
And that's it for Chapter 2 - hope you're all still enjoying it!
Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Done that? Then here's
Chapter 3