[fic] torchwood - overflow - pg - team gen
You may remember back in February my friends and I made a scrapbook for Mighty Kate's CD release party. If you don't (or you're new to pocky_slash), then, quick recap, a bunch of us who got an advance copy of the CD decided to put together a scrapbook with fiction, art, videos, etc inspired by each track on the new album. I wrote two stories. This is one of them.
After four months of editing, I am reposting this today, in honor of Katy's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATY!
eta: I've metaed a little about this story and writing in general and Katy in general here.
As a birthday present to her, I'd really appreciate it if you'd listen to the song linked in the "notes" section of my header (which is, in fact, the song this story is inspired by/based on) and if you like the song, consider buying her album! It's available through iTunes, Amazon, and off her website, which has more song samples.
***
Title: Overflow
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Jack (with canon pairings)
Rating: PG
Length: ~7500
Summary: In which Ianto, Gwen, and Jack grieve in their own ways. In which they realize it's time to move on.
Notes: For Katy. Betaed by the brilliant, patient, encouraging, nicest-person-in-fandom solsticezero. Based on Overflow by Mighty Kate.
never thought that i could feel so small
It's easy to forget about the pain when he's standing in the archives. It's still there, a dull ringing in his ears, an itch beneath his skin, but the archives are comprised of pain and he's used to it by now. It's morbidly relaxing. Each drawer is filled with stories by Torchwood agents long dead. Many of them detail loss and devastation. Few of them end well.
Down here, Tosh and Owen are just another set of files. Owen's report on the space whale is jammed in with Tosh's official reprimand for using telepathic tech. More sad stories in the guise of record keeping. Ianto is well versed in sad stories and overly fond of record keeping. Down here, he can pretend that today is another day.
Upstairs, Gwen and Jack are probably arguing. Gwen is crying and Jack is stomping around the catwalks, letting his footsteps echo through the Hub, as if he's trying to make enough noise for three people. Maybe it's his way of pretending everything is fine. Maybe he thinks if he makes enough noise, he won't notice the noises that are missing.
Ianto can't begrudge him that.
Ianto can't begrudge either of them much of anything. Their city is destroyed, they've been left to pick up the pieces, and they're two men down. They hardly ever sleep and they certainly haven't talked about what's happened. Ianto wonders when Gwen last saw her husband. He knows that he and Jack haven't had more than a moment alone since the world ended, and even those moments have been sharp and awkward. Ianto gives Jack what he needs--a coffee, an ear, a fuck--and presses onwards. He has to. There's too much to do to waste time talking, and what do they have to talk about? Ianto's done this before, after all, and last time was so much worse. The loss of two people hardly seems important in the scheme of things, and while he loved them both very much, he's done this before and he can do it again.
He tries to be kind to Gwen. This is all new to her. For a year, the only deaths the team has suffered have been followed by resurrections. They've forgotten how to mourn because mourning has been so frequently premature. They've started to believe themselves invincible, and while Ianto never bought into it (files and files and files of people who died or disappeared or defected), he can understand why Gwen would, the reason she would want to. He holds her while she cries; he makes her tea. He brushes her hair back and hums quietly when he can't find any words. Yes, it's terrible and yes, he misses them, but he can only say that so many times before it becomes repetitive. He holds her and hums because he doesn't think she's looking for words, anyway, just something to hold on to.
He cleans the Hub and takes the phone calls. He organizes and makes sure they still have food, even if he has to make them sandwiches because the power is out at the Indian place again. He takes care of them because that's his job and he can't let it slip, not when they're depending on him so much.
So he smooths over the feelings of the government officials after Jack hangs up on them. He makes sure Gwen has a rest every now and then and a chance to phone Rhys. And every time he can manage, he sneaks down to the archives and slowly starts to file away Tosh and Owen's open cases. In the archives, he can barely tell the world has nearly ended. In the archives, everything is neatly ordered and perfectly predictable and so much bigger than he is. In the archives, he can close his eyes and be surrounded by the pain, let it wash over him in a dull roar, just for a moment, just for long enough to pull himself together before he returns to check on Gwen and Jack.
They are fighting again, when he gets upstairs. He lets the sounds roll around him, Gwen's voice rising in pitch, Jack's in volume. He thinks Gwen is angry about the way Jack's handling part of the city clean up. He doesn't listen too closely because it doesn't matter--Jack will do what's right, in the end, and Gwen just needs to shout to relieve the tension. If they don't yell, it gets too quiet, and when it gets too quiet, they're forced to examine why they can't hear Tosh's keyboard clacking away or Owen's shit music blasting from the autopsy bay.
He ignores them and goes about his business. No one has called for him yet, so there's nothing to mediate and no coffee to be made. It's early, he thinks. He's been sleeping in Jack's bed and on the couch. He's lost track of day and night, can't remember what his bedroom looks like, but Jack makes Gwen go home when it gets dark. She's back, so it must mean it's morning again.
He stops by Tosh's desk and carefully removes the last of the archive files from her In and Out trays. He's diligent about not disturbing the rest of her belongings even though he knows he'll be packing them up for storage soon enough. He does the same at Owen's desk, though it's a bit harder. He has to shuffle through the piles of reports and magazines and articles to find all of the archive files, but that almost feels more natural. He thinks Owen would have preferred that his belongings were haphazardly picked through.
Gwen and Jack are still yelling. Ianto sends up a small prayer to a god he doesn't believe in, because now, at least, he has an excuse not to talk to them. He can take this time to himself without feeling guilty.
He's not listening to their argument, so he doesn't notice it getting louder until it's too late. He collides with Jack, or maybe it's Gwen, but it doesn't matter because all of those files, all of those papers, everything in his arms is now in a mess on the floor.
He's not sure if the room actually drops into silence or if it's all in his mind, if Gwen and Jack have stopped talking or if the rushing sound in his ears has just drowned them out.
"Could you open your bloody eyes for two seconds and watch where you're going?" he shouts at them. "Am I the only one here who--"
Gwen and Jack are staring at him, and Ianto snaps his mouth shut. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. His chest aches with the effort to reign himself back in, to push everything down into the darkest recesses of his mind, to calm himself and reattach the mask of indifference and dependability.
"I'm sorry," he says levelly, opening his eyes and offering Gwen and Jack a weak smile. Gwen is gaping at him. Jack's frozen to the spot. "I shouldn't have yelled. I apologize. I'll just clean these up."
He kneels and begins reassembling the files as quickly as his shaking hands will allow. Each sheet of paper is like another pinprick. Owen's messy scrawl on an autopsy report stares up at him before he covers it with a neatly typed incident report bearing Toshiko's signature.
He's nearly finished with the clean-up when Gwen and Jack snap out of it. Gwen is on her knees, gathering the papers into a messy pile by her feet. Ianto wants to shout again, wants to yell until he's hoarse because she's just making it worse. It's an even bigger mess, now, a bigger mess that he'll have to sort out in between phoning UNIT and cleaning the Hub, feeding the pets, organizing the city clean up, listening to Gwen, taking care of Jack....
She means well, though, so he swallows the lump in his throat, bites back the shout, and clears his throat as well as he can manage.
"I've got it, Gwen," he says, gently nudging her away. "My job, after all."
His job to take the wrecked remants of Owen and Tosh's lives down to the vaults. His job to piece together these open cases that will never be complete and file them away with hundreds and thousands of other mostly-finished cases, files that were half finished when their recording agents were killed or lost or retconned. His job, because he was fucking spared when they were taken away, he was left behind even though his job is nothing, inconsequential.
He was spared and he's bloody useless. He's not a doctor and he's not a technical genius. He's the office boy who makes the coffee and puts the files in order. And if he was spared, he's going to do those things and do them as best he can. There's nothing else he can do.
Jack kneels down next to him, but he doesn't try to touch the mess that Gwen has made or the piles that Ianto is quickly sorting the papers into. He rubs Ianto's shoulder without saying anything. There's a twinge of pain, but Jack's palm rubs it away until Ianto gathers everything into his arms and stands up.
He hears Gwen and Jack's voices again, whispering quietly behind him as he takes the papers and retreats downstairs. His head is pounding with the effort to keep quiet and calm, and all he wants is somewhere familiar to piece the files and his head back together. The ringing in his ears is down to a dull roar and his steps feel heavy, but he has things to do. No time to rest. Not until he's through with his job.
Jack's footsteps behind him aren't subtle, but he doesn't acknowledge them until they're well into the sub-levels of the Hub. He doesn't hold the door open for Jack as they enter the archives and he doesn't turn to look at him until he's placed the mess of files on his desk. The task before him seems suddenly overwhelming. He feels too clumsy and too distant to sort it all out. He needs to clear his head, but he can't figure out how.
His hands are on his hips when he finally meets Jack's eyes, his body turning slowly towards Jack. "Yes, sir?" he asks. "Do you need anything?"
Jack's expression is unreadable.
"I'd like to know how you're doing," Jack says.
"I'm fine," Ianto assures him. He runs a hand through his hair and glances back down at the papers strewn across his desktop. The sight of it is making him dizzy. "This will take some sorting, but it can wait if you need me for something."
"I need you to come here," Jack says, and Ianto resists the urge to roll his eyes. He doesn't want to fuck right now. If anything, he wants to sleep, but there's no time for that when so many other things need to be done. Still, if it will make Jack feel better, Ianto can do his best. He moves forward into Jack's embrace, each step an effort, and is surprised when Jack eases Ianto's head down onto his shoulder.
"How are you really?" Jack asks. Jack's chest is strong and stable and his arms are tight around Ianto. Ianto closes his eyes and feels Jack's chest contract and expand. He's dizzy with exhaustion, his arms like lead, his resolve to stand up and get to work crumbling.
"I'm just so tired, Jack," he says, and to his horror, he starts to cry. He can feel the tears running down his cheeks, but can't raise his arm to wipe them away. All he can do is stagger further into Jack's arms, his lungs hiccuping over sobs, his hands suddenly too weak to do much more than grasp at Jack's shirt.
"I know," Jack murmurs into his hair. Jack lowers them both to the floor, his fingers cool against the fevered skin at the back of Ianto's neck. "I know. It's okay. You do so much. So much. It's okay. Rest."
"It's not okay," Ianto sobs. "Stop bloody saying it's okay! Tosh and Owen are dead! They're dead, like everyone else down here, like everything else in this room except you. You're always alive and they keep dying and dying and dying and I don't know how you can stand it! How do you feel like this all the time? How can you manage?"
Things that he thinks all the time, things that he sees on Jack's face every time a mission goes poorly, every time someone brings up a past love. They're not things he would ever vocalize, though, not normally, and everything feels so heavy and it's too hard to keep everything inside. He's just so tired and it almost feels good to keep shouting and crying, the pressure and the headache melting away, replaced by the raw, wet feeling in his throat. He buries his face in Jack's shoulder, but it's hard to move any further.
"I have you," Jack says. He feels Jack's lips on the top of his head, on his forehead, on his wet cheeks, but it's all very distant. "I have you and I have Gwen and right now that has to be enough."
It's not really an answer and Ianto wants to call him on it, but everything feels slower and twisting and blurry, everything but the damp cotton of Jack's shirt against his cheek and the arms tightly around him. He remembers the twinge of pain upstairs and his eyes snap open again.
"You drugged me," he slurs. His eyelids begin to droop. "You... you...."
"Ssssh," Jack says. "It's okay. I promise things will get better. Sleep."
Ianto is rather sure it's a lie, but he has to give in. Jack's eliminated his choice in that, and while he knows he should be angry, he can't help but feel relieved that Jack has done for him what they both know he'd be unable to do for himself.
He closes his eyes and gives into slumber.
looking for a face to recognize
Getting out of bed never hurt so much before. Gwen would moan and groan and tussle with Rhys and pull herself from the sheets at the last possible minute, but it didn't used to hurt. Now she clings to it vehemently, holds onto the warmth of Rhys' back and the threadbare duvet for as long as she can. When she's in bed, she can pretend it's still Before. She can pretend that Owen and Tosh are still alive, that Cardiff is still in one piece. When she's in bed, she can hide from the world for just a few hours.
It's not really a surprise that she's been starting her day with tears for the past week.
She washes her face and applies her make-up and leaves the house with trepidation hanging heavy in her stomach. Going to work means making a space for herself in the gaping holes her colleagues left in the Hub. It means seeing Ianto's indifferent mask and being overwhelmed by Jack's grief. It means endless phone calls and apologies because the city is in ruin and it's their fault, it's all their fault, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to make it better.
She thinks about Retcon on her way to work. She thinks about it every morning as she walks down the too-quiet Cardiff streets. One little pill and she can forget Tosh and Owen, forget Jack and Ianto. One little pill and she can go back to life with Rhys and not walk around with this sadness. She can stay in bed all day and not force herself to put on a happy face as she talks to the police department and coordinates with UNIT. Just one pill.
She lets herself think it from the moment she leaves the house to the moment she arrives at the tourist office door. Then she puts it out of her mind for another twenty-four hours. Retcon is the coward's way out. If she takes that pill, she loses her best friends and the memories of the most breathtaking year of her life.
The good outweighs the bad, but sometimes it feels like it's a precarious balance.
When she gets downstairs, Ianto is missing and Jack is stomping around the upper levels of the Hub, already on the phone with someone. She puts her purse at her desk looks at her own to-do list. Calls to make. Visits to make. She needs to check on a Weevil's nest in the sewers by the police station.
Gwen steels herself for another day of ripping open her fresh wounds and seeks out Jack. She has questions about the Weevil nest and their plan of attack. She can't help but overhear his phone conversation, and Tosh's surname gives her pause.
"I know, Mrs. Sato. I know. We're doing our best, but it's going to be difficult."
Toshiko's mother, then. She's surprised that Jack is the one to make this call and then ashamed that she assumed he pawned it off to Ianto.
"I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we recovery the body, but, unfortunately, it may be impossible....of course. Of course. I'll have my assistant call you if that changes. I'm so sorry for your loss, ma'am. Toshiko was brilliant and beautiful and she's going to be deeply missed."
Jack closes his eyes when he hangs up his mobile, and Gwen stares at him for a long moment.
"Why can't you give the Satos Tosh's body?" she asks.
Jack opens his eyes and whirls around. It's a testament to how exhausted he is that she was able to sneak up on him in the first place.
"Gwen," he says, with a resigned sigh. "You know Torchwood protocol. Bodies stay in the morgue."
"She wasn't killed by an alien, Jack," Gwen says. "She's not part of an open case. She was shot and it was horrible, but it wasn't supernatural."
"Nothing we do is supernatural," Jack says. He ignores her and walks down the stairs towards the main level of the Hub. She wants to remind him that he's over a hundred and fifty years old and can't die, that their medic was a literal zombie for months, that the woman she replaced sought revenge from beyond the grave.
Instead, she follows him downstairs and says, "Extra-terrestrial, then. Christ, Jack, you know what I mean. Let Tosh's mother have her body!"
"No," Jack says. His voice could cut glass. "End of conversation."
Gwen clings to her anger and outrage because anything is better than despair. She follows Jack, running to keep up with his long strides, to overtake him and turn around, shoving him back by his shoulders.
"It's not the bloody end of the conversation!"
Jack leans closer, almost menacing, and if adrenaline wasn't pumping through her veins loud enough that she could hear her pulse in her ear, she would have cowered.
"Last time I checked, I was still the boss. I believe you and I have already had this discussion. The body belongs to Torchwood. It goes in the morgue."
"Things have changed since then," Gwen insists. She's not sure why she's so adamant that Tosh's body go to her family. She thinks someone should have closure and she knows it's not going to be her. "We've changed! It's not all about Torchwood, anymore, Jack, it's about us. We're a family, aren't we?"
"It's always about Torchwood," Jack says.
"Is this what's going to happen to us, too?" she presses. "I'll die and you'll take my things from Rhys and lock my body away? Is this what's going to happen to Ianto? Are you going to do that to his memory too? Don't you--"
Jack holds up a hand. For a moment, she thinks he's going to slap her, but he just holds it there, eyes cold and hard.
"Think very carefully about what you say next," he says, his voice barely higher than a whisper. "Think about what you're using him to gain. Is it worth it, Gwen? Do you really want to demean him like that?"
Gwen swallows the rest of her sentence. Jack's right, of course. Jack's always fucking right, and she almost wants to defy him out of spite, but he knows exactly what buttons to push to keep her from stepping out of line. Ianto is her best friend and she loves him like a brother. He's been through enough shit without her pulling him down to her level.
"It's not fair," Gwen says, and her voice cracks. Jack's body seems to sag, but he doesn't respond, merely turns around and stalks back towards his office. Gwen turns to follow, but neither of them are paying attention and at some point during their argument, Ianto has appeared from nowhere. She can't stop herself from crashing into him and isn't quick enough to save his armful of papers from scattering to the ground.
"Could you open your bloody eyes for two seconds and watch where you're going?" Ianto shouts. " Am I the only one here who--" he cuts himself off, but Gwen's already staring in shock. It's not a tone of voice he's ever taken with her before. It's certainly not a tone of voice she's heard him take with Jack. She's sure they row like any other couple, but Ianto's almost obsessive in his need to keep his private life and his work life separate, even if they both revolve around the same person.
Ianto's eyes are closed and it's painfully obvious he's trying hard to reign himself in. When he looks at them again, his face is serene, but exhausted.
"I shouldn't have yelled. I apologize," he says. "I'll just clean these up." He kneels to the floor and starts to meticulously gather the papers together. Gwen can only stare. Jack has disappeared, and when he reappears a moment later, Gwen finds herself falling to her knees to help, even as Ianto shoos her away.
"It's my job, after all," he says, as if it wasn't their incompetence that made him drop everything in the first place.
Jack places a hand on her shoulder and gestures for her to stand up. He takes her place, rubbing Ianto's back soothingly but making no move to help.
She almost misses the way he palms the hypodermic needle as Ianto gets unsteadily to his feet.
"Jack," she says quietly. She doesn't like this. She doesn't think Ianto would approve of whatever it was that Jack just did, but Jack ignores her and follows Ianto downstairs, his pace slow and measured and a solid five feet behind Ianto all the way through the doors and out of sight.
They're gone a good fifteen minutes, but Gwen can't bring herself to do anything in their absence. She tells herself it's because she needs an update from Jack, but her head is pounding and her lungs are burning with suppressed emotion. She wants an excuse not to think, but she spends the entire fifteen minutes worrying about what's going to happen when Jack and Ianto reappear.
When they do return, Jack is carrying Ianto's limp body in his arms. It looks ludicrious; Ianto is nearly as tall as Jack and his arms and legs droop out of Jack's grasp. Jack has to walk sideways through the entry way to avoiding banging Ianto's head.
"What did you do to him, Jack?" she asks quietly.
Jack ignores her and walks Ianto precariously up the stairs, across the Hub, and over to the couch. He tucks a blanket over Ianto and stares at him for a long time before he answers.
"I gave him a sedative," Jack says. He turns to look at her, hands shoved in his pockets. "He needs to sleep."
"He agreed to that?" Gwen asks. She knows that Ianto's agreement is moot, but the sharp taste of opposition is still on her tongue and if she doesn't give into it, she'll have to give into the tears again. She's so fucking sick of crying.
"It doesn't matter," Jack says. "He'd never agree to it. You know that." Jack covers his face with his hands and when he drops them, his eyes are wet. Gwen wants him to send her home. She wants to suggest it to him, to say, Take him back to his flat and we'll start fresh tomorrow, but they can't do that. The city is in shambles. They're to blame. They can't abandon it, no matter how much she'd like to.
"Let him rest," Jack says. He turns away, but not before she sees the glitter of a tear-track on his face. "You take UNIT, I'll take the Mayor's office. No, scratch that. I'll take UNIT and you can take the Mayor's office. The Mayor hates me."
"Sure," Gwen says. She swallows back her own tears and the rest of the argument.
It's not the easiest day she's ever had at Torchwood. Each day after Tosh and Owen gets harder and harder. There are bits of them everywhere, all over the Hub. One of Tosh's hair ties is sitting on the soap dish in the ladies' room. One of Owen's scrub shirts hangs from an awkward angle from the door knob to the locker room. She's afraid to touch their things because she still can't believe they're gone and can't bring herself to be the one to make it official. She hates herself for leaving that task to Ianto and Jack, but sometimes she needs to be selfish. God knows Jack is.
She bites her lip after she thinks that, bites it hard enough to bleed. Jack is the most generous person she knows, save for maybe Ianto, and she knows, she knows that he has reason for doing the things he does, keeping things away from them. She knows how much guilt he feels that his brother and his former lover caused this destruction. She knows he carries Tosh and Owen's deaths and the deaths of everyone who's come before them.
It doesn't make it any easier to look at him.
At eight o'clock, after a day on the phones and in the sewers, after giving Ianto another shot and screaming at Jack for hanging up on Martha Jones, after crying first in the ladies room and then in the tourist office, Gwen climbs the stairs to Jack's office. Her footsteps are heavy. She makes sure her trainers pound against the catwalk as she goes to the door. For all that she normally pressures Jack into embracing his humanity, she's seen enough of his tears to last the rest of her life.
He's sitting at his desk, staring down at a paper on the top of it. She clears her throat twice before he looks up.
"I think you should take Ianto home and stay there," she says. Jack stares at her as if she's speaking Swahili. "For the night," she elaborates. "Don't think I don't know you've been keeping him here ever since--ever since."
"His choice," Jack says. His voice is hoarse. "I didn't ask him. He just stayed."
"Of course he stayed," Gwen says without thinking, "he loves you."
She covers her mouth with one hand after she says it, expecting an awkward silence or, worse, a quick dismissal. Jack just laughs. It's not a happy sound.
"I know," he says. "I--you know I love all of you, right?" Gwen nods, her hand still clasping her mouth. She doesn't remind him that there is no all of them anymore, just her and Ianto and two ghosts. "He--" Jack falters and looks back down at his desk. "He knows?" Gwen nods again, more certain this time. "Did Tosh and Owen?"
"I think so," says Gwen. She hopes she's not lying. "Take him to his flat. Come back tomorrow. There's nothing we can do tonight that can't wait."
He doesn't answer her, but he stands up and grabs his coat, staring down at it for a long time before shrugging it onto his shoulders. She knows she should offer to help get Ianto out to his car, to shut down the Hub for the night, but she needs to be away. She's spent so much time away these past few days, away mentally, away physically when she could manage. Jack's grief overwhelms even her own and Ianto's passive silence breaks her heart. She needs to see the world. She needs to understand that this isn't the end. She needs to see that people are going about their jobs, going to the shops, fighting and kissing and walking and talking. She needs to remember that the sun still rises and the world goes on and the grief in the Hub is almost palapable. It amplifies her own and makes her chest ache and she needs to get away.
So she goes.
She doesn't remember getting her purse and her jacket. She doesn't remember kissing Ianto's forehead or taking the lift up to the tourist office. She doesn't remember the walk through the quiet Cardiff streets.
She remembers home. She remembers Rhys.
Rhys is waiting for her at the door to the flat. He has a cup of tea and he holds her against his chest as she weeps again. Her eyes are sore from the constant tears. Her throat is still raw. She's sick of crying, but crying with Rhys is different. Rhys wasn't there. Rhys isn't mourning. Rhys doesn't expect anything of her and Rhys won't look at her with guilty eyes. He just sits with her and lets her cry. He brushes her hair back and murmurs quietly. With Rhys, she doesn't feel guilty for surviving or weak for mourning, she just feels, to the tips of her toes, thankful that she's alive and thankful that she has someone to hold her.
She wraps her arms more tightly around him and hopes that Jack and Ianto are holding each other.
hoping that somebody hears my call
There are about six dozen reasons that Jack should stay at the Hub, but without Ianto to quietly remind him of them, it's easy to shove them aside when Gwen stands in front of him, not quite looking at him, and implores him to leave.
"Take him to his flat," she says, with a glance over her shoulder at the Hub atrium where Ianto is still unconscious on the couch. "Come back tomorrow. There's nothing we can do tonight that can't wait."
There's still a protest on his lips, but he remembers the wet spot on his shoulder from Ianto's tears. He can still feel it, even though it's been hours since he drugged Ianto into a dreamless slumber. If he drops Ianto off at the flat and then comes back to the Hub, Ianto will only return as soon as he wakes up. Better to stay there with him. Better to watch over him, like he should have from the start.
They're hollow excuses, empty justification for his own selfishness, but he clings to them defiantly and shrugs his coat on. Gwen is already gone.
It feels like it's been years since he put the Hub into overnight hibernation, but it was the night before the warehouse explosions that started this all. It was less than a week ago that his fingers typed in these computer commands, that he let Ianto lure him away with the promise of a truly terrible film and a bottle of Scotch. He remembers the way Toshiko hid her smile behind her computer screen as she helped him speed through the process so he could join Ianto in the carpark.
Ianto's been drugged against his will and Gwen's already fled to her husband and her illusion of a normal life. It takes Jack twice as long to shut down the systems.
There are road blocks up and entire streets that have been reduced to loose gravel and mounds of debris. Jack needs to turn the SUV around three times, and eventually just hits the flashing blue lights and drives over the chunks of tarmac and dirt, over the twisted remains of a streetlamp and the general unidentifiable rubble that litters the street. The SUV has seen worse--a month ago, Ianto and Tosh lectured Owen for an hour after he drove the SUV pell-mell through a rough open field in the Welsh countryside, tearing up the suspension. Jack is barely inching the vehicle over the debris, but it still hurts more than that rough ride from four weeks earlier.
It says something about the horrors that Cardiff has seen in the past week that no one comments when Jack carries Ianto, unconscious, down the street from the SUV and into his building. There aren't many people out on the streets as it is--the street lights aren't reliable yet and the looting hasn't been too bad. He assumes that people still remember the wild animals that were loose in the street the night of the terrorist attacks.
Wild animals. Terrorist attacks. Jack wonders if he thinks those things to remind himself that no one else can know what really happened or if he thinks them because he yearns for them to be true.
Ianto is too light--Jack wonders how much he's eaten since this started. He should have checked up on Ianto. Yet another way he's failed his team.
Ianto lives on the second floor and Jack has no problem carrying him upstairs and unlocking the door. He's surprised Ianto is still asleep, but maybe he shouldn't be. Ianto can fade into the background like the best sort of butler and he's made himself scarce in the aftermath of the disaster, in the aftermath of Gray. He's always there with a cup of coffee or much-needed file or a hand to hold, but he hasn't been present. Jack should have seen this coming from the start, but instead he leaned on Ianto, expected just a little too much from him.
He tucks Ianto into bed, gently and efficiently removing his suit and shoes. He covers him with the duvet and smoothes the wrinkles out before returning to the living room. Every bone in his body says that he should run. He should retreat to a rooftop, or better yet, another city. He should retcon Ianto and Gwen, let them live their lives peacefully, and escape this city. He spent a hundred years thinking of the rift as a tool to get what he wanted. He knows now that it's nothing more than a curse. Cardiff will crumble again and again, no matter how hard he tries to stop it. It's going to kill or destroy everyone who gets in its way. It's just a matter of time before he loses Gwen, before he loses Ianto.
He can't run, though. He's run away from too many things in his life and he knows, if nothing else, Gwen and Ianto would tear the world apart to find him again. He let them in too deep. He was never supposed to make connections on this fucking planet. Bide his time, wait for the Doctor. But the Doctor didn't have answers and his past couldn't be fixed by a conversation. He's lived a hundred lives and he has millions left to go, and sometimes it's just so lonely that he can't stand it. He knows he's not good for Ianto, for Gwen, for Martha, for Torchwood in general, but sometimes observing from the outside hurts just as much as losing on the inside.
Ianto's building doesn't have roof access, so Jack makes due with the bay window in his living room. There's a gap in the buildings across the street and he can see the edge of the city skyline.
Well, what's left of it.
It's too dark to make out the difference in shape--rolling blackouts take out most of downtown after ten pm--but he knows it's there, instinctively. He's been in Cardiff for a long time. He watched the city build upwards and outwards out of nothing. He watched the skyline morph into a thousand different things as the years passed. He's spend dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of nights taking it all in, wondering why he cared so much to protect it.
He's done a shitty job. The city is bleeding and it's his fault.
He paces in front of the window, perches himself on the arm of the chair next to it. He watches the quality of light change and wonders if it's from the flickering power grid or the passage of time. He rests his elbows on the window ledge and, finally, stands stock-still listening to the chorus of barking dogs, wailing alarms, and distant car horns.
He's tried not to think of Gray in the days following the end of the world. Thinking of Gray means taking the blame, and while he knows it's his fault--his brother who set them up, his former lover who laid the explosive charges, his lack of foresight that caught them all off-guard--confronting that fact hurts more than he can handle right now. He sees the mottled bruises on Ianto's shoulder, the red rims around Gwen's eyes when she sneaks off to cry, and he has to bite back the flood of apologies. The last time the world nearly ended, he was the one who was wronged. This time he might as well have set off the explosions himself. He doesn't know how they can bear to look at him.
He hears the floorboards creak, but doesn't turn around. A glance at his watch tells him that more than an hour has passed since he nestled Ianto into bed. It's possible the sedative did more harm than good--Ianto's sleep schedule is even more convoluted than usual, now. He slept from ten am to almost midnight and he'll probably be tired again by the time they get to work in the morning.
"Rise and shine, Mr. Jones," he says softly. The footsteps continue, surer, now, and it's not long before Ianto is standing next to him. His hair is rumpled and his face is criss-crossed with pillow creases. He has the duvet wrapped around his shoulders and he looks so young that Jack has to blink back tears. This is a child. A child whom he is leading to the slaughter.
"You drugged me," Ianto says, blinking up at him with a muted, distant sort of outrage.
"I did," Jack agrees. "I'm sorry. You were hurting."
"Always hurting," Ianto say automatically, and his eyes widen as soon as the words leave his mouth. "I mean--"
"No," Jack says. "It's okay. I know what you mean."
"I'm happy," Ianto insists. "With work. With you. I just--"
"I know," Jack says again. "It's been a hard week."
Ianto laughs, but it sounds like it hurts him to do so. It hurts Jack to listen to it.
"That's one way of putting it," he says. He inches closer to Jack, and Jack gives into temptation and puts an arm around his waist. "See anything interesting out there?"
"No weevils," Jack says. "No looting. No violence. I think everyone's asleep."
"I think everyone's still scared shitless, personally." Ianto's relaxed against him, eyes half-lidded. He sounds like himself for the first time since they watched Tosh bleed out on the floor of the autopsy room. Jack wonders if he's back to normal or if this is a drug-induced reprieve and he'll be back to repressing himself when they return to the Hub in the morning.
"Before," Jack says abruptly. "In the archives."
He can feel Ianto shifting and stiffening. This is not a conversation that Ianto wants to have. Jack knows that. But Ianto won't say anything, and although it's cruel and a little selfish, Jack is going to take advantage of that.
"When you asked how I manage," Jack says. "When you said--"
"Jack," Ianto says. "I didn't--"
"No." Jack squeezes his shoulder, but he doesn't look away from the window. "You asked how I manage. And I don't. I didn't. I don't have any other choice. I can't die. For years I couldn't leave. I didn't have a choice. I tried not to get attached, but...."
"You're you and you always get attached," Ianto says.
"Yeah," Jack says. "Yeah, I am. I do. But I could convince myself I was waiting for the Doctor. After I asked to be brought back here, I didn't have that excuse. I couldn't pretend you didn't matter--all of you--because it was my choice."
He leans over and buries his nose in Ianto's hair. He smells like detergent and fabric softener. It seems like months ago that he forced Jack to help him put fresh sheets on the bed, but it was the morning the world went to hell. It was less than a week ago.
"It hurts," he murmurs against Ianto's scalp. "So much. It hurts more than it's hurt for a long time, but you asked how I manage and I manage because I have you. I have you and Gwen and I can't lose you too. Not yet. So I have to keep going."
Ianto is silent and unmoving in his arms and he wonders if he's gone too far, if it's too much. But he shifts, slightly, and then Ianto's arms are around his back.
"We can't--" Ianto stops himself. "We need to... I know we're mourning." He speaks carefully, choosing each word, composing each sentence with intent. "But we need to fix ourselves. This isn't--we're not speaking to each other. We're all screaming into a void. You fight with Gwen, Gwen cries to me, I... handle things my own way. But we're just acting as a means to an end. We need to... interact." He pauses. "Is this--am I being clear? Am I--"
Jack kisses him.
It's the best kiss they've had in days. He can't taste Ianto's pain or desperation, he's not kissing as a way to avoid talking, he's not kissing as an apology. He's kissing Ianto because, at this moment, he has never loved him more. He has never been more caring and brilliant and right. He's kissing Ianto because he's missed him, missed this, and because Ianto is twenty-five years old and shouldn't have the strength to hold the three of them afloat, but he does. He can step up where Jack has failed so miserably, and it's probably selfish to rely on that, but he's too tired to be generous.
"I've missed you," Ianto confesses almost silently when they pull away. "Gwen, too."
"I hope you don't miss Gwen like that," Jack says. His leer isn't up to its usual standards, but if Ianto's laugh is any indication, he gets points for intent.
"You know this is going to get worse before it gets better," Jack tells him.
"I know," Ianto says.
"And just because we see this clearly now doesn't mean we're going to walk into work tomorrow and be able to operate like everything is back to normal," Jack says.
"I know."
"You know we have a lot of work ahead of us," Jack says.
"I know."
Jack takes Ianto's chin and meets his gaze straight on. "You know I--Ianto, I do--"
Ianto steps back and closes his eyes. He lets out a long, shaky breath. He holds up a hand and Jack closes his mouth and frowns.
"I... no," Ianto says. "Don't say that. Please. Not tonight." He opens his eyes again and shakes his head. "If you--say it tomorrow. If you still want to say it tomorrow, say it tomorrow, but I just--I can't. Not tonight. Not after everything. Please."
Jack sighs, but nods and steps forward, back into Ianto's personal space. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I can do that. But tomorrow--tomorrow we're going to have to start packing up Owen and Tosh's things."
Ianto swallows. "Tomorrow?" he asks.
"It's time," Jack says quietly.
Ianto rests his head on Jack's shoulder. "Okay," he says, letting out another long breath. "Okay."
The guilt isn't gone. The pain is still sharp. He's nearly drowning in sorrow, but he's survived worse and he'll survive this.
"Let's go back to bed," he says to Ianto. "We can work it out in the morning."
With one last look at the broken skyline, he steers them back to the bedroom, duvet trailing behind. Things will look better in the morning. They have to.
After four months of editing, I am reposting this today, in honor of Katy's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATY!
eta: I've metaed a little about this story and writing in general and Katy in general here.
As a birthday present to her, I'd really appreciate it if you'd listen to the song linked in the "notes" section of my header (which is, in fact, the song this story is inspired by/based on) and if you like the song, consider buying her album! It's available through iTunes, Amazon, and off her website, which has more song samples.
***
Title: Overflow
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Jack (with canon pairings)
Rating: PG
Length: ~7500
Summary: In which Ianto, Gwen, and Jack grieve in their own ways. In which they realize it's time to move on.
Notes: For Katy. Betaed by the brilliant, patient, encouraging, nicest-person-in-fandom solsticezero. Based on Overflow by Mighty Kate.
never thought that i could feel so small
It's easy to forget about the pain when he's standing in the archives. It's still there, a dull ringing in his ears, an itch beneath his skin, but the archives are comprised of pain and he's used to it by now. It's morbidly relaxing. Each drawer is filled with stories by Torchwood agents long dead. Many of them detail loss and devastation. Few of them end well.
Down here, Tosh and Owen are just another set of files. Owen's report on the space whale is jammed in with Tosh's official reprimand for using telepathic tech. More sad stories in the guise of record keeping. Ianto is well versed in sad stories and overly fond of record keeping. Down here, he can pretend that today is another day.
Upstairs, Gwen and Jack are probably arguing. Gwen is crying and Jack is stomping around the catwalks, letting his footsteps echo through the Hub, as if he's trying to make enough noise for three people. Maybe it's his way of pretending everything is fine. Maybe he thinks if he makes enough noise, he won't notice the noises that are missing.
Ianto can't begrudge him that.
Ianto can't begrudge either of them much of anything. Their city is destroyed, they've been left to pick up the pieces, and they're two men down. They hardly ever sleep and they certainly haven't talked about what's happened. Ianto wonders when Gwen last saw her husband. He knows that he and Jack haven't had more than a moment alone since the world ended, and even those moments have been sharp and awkward. Ianto gives Jack what he needs--a coffee, an ear, a fuck--and presses onwards. He has to. There's too much to do to waste time talking, and what do they have to talk about? Ianto's done this before, after all, and last time was so much worse. The loss of two people hardly seems important in the scheme of things, and while he loved them both very much, he's done this before and he can do it again.
He tries to be kind to Gwen. This is all new to her. For a year, the only deaths the team has suffered have been followed by resurrections. They've forgotten how to mourn because mourning has been so frequently premature. They've started to believe themselves invincible, and while Ianto never bought into it (files and files and files of people who died or disappeared or defected), he can understand why Gwen would, the reason she would want to. He holds her while she cries; he makes her tea. He brushes her hair back and hums quietly when he can't find any words. Yes, it's terrible and yes, he misses them, but he can only say that so many times before it becomes repetitive. He holds her and hums because he doesn't think she's looking for words, anyway, just something to hold on to.
He cleans the Hub and takes the phone calls. He organizes and makes sure they still have food, even if he has to make them sandwiches because the power is out at the Indian place again. He takes care of them because that's his job and he can't let it slip, not when they're depending on him so much.
So he smooths over the feelings of the government officials after Jack hangs up on them. He makes sure Gwen has a rest every now and then and a chance to phone Rhys. And every time he can manage, he sneaks down to the archives and slowly starts to file away Tosh and Owen's open cases. In the archives, he can barely tell the world has nearly ended. In the archives, everything is neatly ordered and perfectly predictable and so much bigger than he is. In the archives, he can close his eyes and be surrounded by the pain, let it wash over him in a dull roar, just for a moment, just for long enough to pull himself together before he returns to check on Gwen and Jack.
They are fighting again, when he gets upstairs. He lets the sounds roll around him, Gwen's voice rising in pitch, Jack's in volume. He thinks Gwen is angry about the way Jack's handling part of the city clean up. He doesn't listen too closely because it doesn't matter--Jack will do what's right, in the end, and Gwen just needs to shout to relieve the tension. If they don't yell, it gets too quiet, and when it gets too quiet, they're forced to examine why they can't hear Tosh's keyboard clacking away or Owen's shit music blasting from the autopsy bay.
He ignores them and goes about his business. No one has called for him yet, so there's nothing to mediate and no coffee to be made. It's early, he thinks. He's been sleeping in Jack's bed and on the couch. He's lost track of day and night, can't remember what his bedroom looks like, but Jack makes Gwen go home when it gets dark. She's back, so it must mean it's morning again.
He stops by Tosh's desk and carefully removes the last of the archive files from her In and Out trays. He's diligent about not disturbing the rest of her belongings even though he knows he'll be packing them up for storage soon enough. He does the same at Owen's desk, though it's a bit harder. He has to shuffle through the piles of reports and magazines and articles to find all of the archive files, but that almost feels more natural. He thinks Owen would have preferred that his belongings were haphazardly picked through.
Gwen and Jack are still yelling. Ianto sends up a small prayer to a god he doesn't believe in, because now, at least, he has an excuse not to talk to them. He can take this time to himself without feeling guilty.
He's not listening to their argument, so he doesn't notice it getting louder until it's too late. He collides with Jack, or maybe it's Gwen, but it doesn't matter because all of those files, all of those papers, everything in his arms is now in a mess on the floor.
He's not sure if the room actually drops into silence or if it's all in his mind, if Gwen and Jack have stopped talking or if the rushing sound in his ears has just drowned them out.
"Could you open your bloody eyes for two seconds and watch where you're going?" he shouts at them. "Am I the only one here who--"
Gwen and Jack are staring at him, and Ianto snaps his mouth shut. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. His chest aches with the effort to reign himself back in, to push everything down into the darkest recesses of his mind, to calm himself and reattach the mask of indifference and dependability.
"I'm sorry," he says levelly, opening his eyes and offering Gwen and Jack a weak smile. Gwen is gaping at him. Jack's frozen to the spot. "I shouldn't have yelled. I apologize. I'll just clean these up."
He kneels and begins reassembling the files as quickly as his shaking hands will allow. Each sheet of paper is like another pinprick. Owen's messy scrawl on an autopsy report stares up at him before he covers it with a neatly typed incident report bearing Toshiko's signature.
He's nearly finished with the clean-up when Gwen and Jack snap out of it. Gwen is on her knees, gathering the papers into a messy pile by her feet. Ianto wants to shout again, wants to yell until he's hoarse because she's just making it worse. It's an even bigger mess, now, a bigger mess that he'll have to sort out in between phoning UNIT and cleaning the Hub, feeding the pets, organizing the city clean up, listening to Gwen, taking care of Jack....
She means well, though, so he swallows the lump in his throat, bites back the shout, and clears his throat as well as he can manage.
"I've got it, Gwen," he says, gently nudging her away. "My job, after all."
His job to take the wrecked remants of Owen and Tosh's lives down to the vaults. His job to piece together these open cases that will never be complete and file them away with hundreds and thousands of other mostly-finished cases, files that were half finished when their recording agents were killed or lost or retconned. His job, because he was fucking spared when they were taken away, he was left behind even though his job is nothing, inconsequential.
He was spared and he's bloody useless. He's not a doctor and he's not a technical genius. He's the office boy who makes the coffee and puts the files in order. And if he was spared, he's going to do those things and do them as best he can. There's nothing else he can do.
Jack kneels down next to him, but he doesn't try to touch the mess that Gwen has made or the piles that Ianto is quickly sorting the papers into. He rubs Ianto's shoulder without saying anything. There's a twinge of pain, but Jack's palm rubs it away until Ianto gathers everything into his arms and stands up.
He hears Gwen and Jack's voices again, whispering quietly behind him as he takes the papers and retreats downstairs. His head is pounding with the effort to keep quiet and calm, and all he wants is somewhere familiar to piece the files and his head back together. The ringing in his ears is down to a dull roar and his steps feel heavy, but he has things to do. No time to rest. Not until he's through with his job.
Jack's footsteps behind him aren't subtle, but he doesn't acknowledge them until they're well into the sub-levels of the Hub. He doesn't hold the door open for Jack as they enter the archives and he doesn't turn to look at him until he's placed the mess of files on his desk. The task before him seems suddenly overwhelming. He feels too clumsy and too distant to sort it all out. He needs to clear his head, but he can't figure out how.
His hands are on his hips when he finally meets Jack's eyes, his body turning slowly towards Jack. "Yes, sir?" he asks. "Do you need anything?"
Jack's expression is unreadable.
"I'd like to know how you're doing," Jack says.
"I'm fine," Ianto assures him. He runs a hand through his hair and glances back down at the papers strewn across his desktop. The sight of it is making him dizzy. "This will take some sorting, but it can wait if you need me for something."
"I need you to come here," Jack says, and Ianto resists the urge to roll his eyes. He doesn't want to fuck right now. If anything, he wants to sleep, but there's no time for that when so many other things need to be done. Still, if it will make Jack feel better, Ianto can do his best. He moves forward into Jack's embrace, each step an effort, and is surprised when Jack eases Ianto's head down onto his shoulder.
"How are you really?" Jack asks. Jack's chest is strong and stable and his arms are tight around Ianto. Ianto closes his eyes and feels Jack's chest contract and expand. He's dizzy with exhaustion, his arms like lead, his resolve to stand up and get to work crumbling.
"I'm just so tired, Jack," he says, and to his horror, he starts to cry. He can feel the tears running down his cheeks, but can't raise his arm to wipe them away. All he can do is stagger further into Jack's arms, his lungs hiccuping over sobs, his hands suddenly too weak to do much more than grasp at Jack's shirt.
"I know," Jack murmurs into his hair. Jack lowers them both to the floor, his fingers cool against the fevered skin at the back of Ianto's neck. "I know. It's okay. You do so much. So much. It's okay. Rest."
"It's not okay," Ianto sobs. "Stop bloody saying it's okay! Tosh and Owen are dead! They're dead, like everyone else down here, like everything else in this room except you. You're always alive and they keep dying and dying and dying and I don't know how you can stand it! How do you feel like this all the time? How can you manage?"
Things that he thinks all the time, things that he sees on Jack's face every time a mission goes poorly, every time someone brings up a past love. They're not things he would ever vocalize, though, not normally, and everything feels so heavy and it's too hard to keep everything inside. He's just so tired and it almost feels good to keep shouting and crying, the pressure and the headache melting away, replaced by the raw, wet feeling in his throat. He buries his face in Jack's shoulder, but it's hard to move any further.
"I have you," Jack says. He feels Jack's lips on the top of his head, on his forehead, on his wet cheeks, but it's all very distant. "I have you and I have Gwen and right now that has to be enough."
It's not really an answer and Ianto wants to call him on it, but everything feels slower and twisting and blurry, everything but the damp cotton of Jack's shirt against his cheek and the arms tightly around him. He remembers the twinge of pain upstairs and his eyes snap open again.
"You drugged me," he slurs. His eyelids begin to droop. "You... you...."
"Ssssh," Jack says. "It's okay. I promise things will get better. Sleep."
Ianto is rather sure it's a lie, but he has to give in. Jack's eliminated his choice in that, and while he knows he should be angry, he can't help but feel relieved that Jack has done for him what they both know he'd be unable to do for himself.
He closes his eyes and gives into slumber.
looking for a face to recognize
Getting out of bed never hurt so much before. Gwen would moan and groan and tussle with Rhys and pull herself from the sheets at the last possible minute, but it didn't used to hurt. Now she clings to it vehemently, holds onto the warmth of Rhys' back and the threadbare duvet for as long as she can. When she's in bed, she can pretend it's still Before. She can pretend that Owen and Tosh are still alive, that Cardiff is still in one piece. When she's in bed, she can hide from the world for just a few hours.
It's not really a surprise that she's been starting her day with tears for the past week.
She washes her face and applies her make-up and leaves the house with trepidation hanging heavy in her stomach. Going to work means making a space for herself in the gaping holes her colleagues left in the Hub. It means seeing Ianto's indifferent mask and being overwhelmed by Jack's grief. It means endless phone calls and apologies because the city is in ruin and it's their fault, it's all their fault, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to make it better.
She thinks about Retcon on her way to work. She thinks about it every morning as she walks down the too-quiet Cardiff streets. One little pill and she can forget Tosh and Owen, forget Jack and Ianto. One little pill and she can go back to life with Rhys and not walk around with this sadness. She can stay in bed all day and not force herself to put on a happy face as she talks to the police department and coordinates with UNIT. Just one pill.
She lets herself think it from the moment she leaves the house to the moment she arrives at the tourist office door. Then she puts it out of her mind for another twenty-four hours. Retcon is the coward's way out. If she takes that pill, she loses her best friends and the memories of the most breathtaking year of her life.
The good outweighs the bad, but sometimes it feels like it's a precarious balance.
When she gets downstairs, Ianto is missing and Jack is stomping around the upper levels of the Hub, already on the phone with someone. She puts her purse at her desk looks at her own to-do list. Calls to make. Visits to make. She needs to check on a Weevil's nest in the sewers by the police station.
Gwen steels herself for another day of ripping open her fresh wounds and seeks out Jack. She has questions about the Weevil nest and their plan of attack. She can't help but overhear his phone conversation, and Tosh's surname gives her pause.
"I know, Mrs. Sato. I know. We're doing our best, but it's going to be difficult."
Toshiko's mother, then. She's surprised that Jack is the one to make this call and then ashamed that she assumed he pawned it off to Ianto.
"I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we recovery the body, but, unfortunately, it may be impossible....of course. Of course. I'll have my assistant call you if that changes. I'm so sorry for your loss, ma'am. Toshiko was brilliant and beautiful and she's going to be deeply missed."
Jack closes his eyes when he hangs up his mobile, and Gwen stares at him for a long moment.
"Why can't you give the Satos Tosh's body?" she asks.
Jack opens his eyes and whirls around. It's a testament to how exhausted he is that she was able to sneak up on him in the first place.
"Gwen," he says, with a resigned sigh. "You know Torchwood protocol. Bodies stay in the morgue."
"She wasn't killed by an alien, Jack," Gwen says. "She's not part of an open case. She was shot and it was horrible, but it wasn't supernatural."
"Nothing we do is supernatural," Jack says. He ignores her and walks down the stairs towards the main level of the Hub. She wants to remind him that he's over a hundred and fifty years old and can't die, that their medic was a literal zombie for months, that the woman she replaced sought revenge from beyond the grave.
Instead, she follows him downstairs and says, "Extra-terrestrial, then. Christ, Jack, you know what I mean. Let Tosh's mother have her body!"
"No," Jack says. His voice could cut glass. "End of conversation."
Gwen clings to her anger and outrage because anything is better than despair. She follows Jack, running to keep up with his long strides, to overtake him and turn around, shoving him back by his shoulders.
"It's not the bloody end of the conversation!"
Jack leans closer, almost menacing, and if adrenaline wasn't pumping through her veins loud enough that she could hear her pulse in her ear, she would have cowered.
"Last time I checked, I was still the boss. I believe you and I have already had this discussion. The body belongs to Torchwood. It goes in the morgue."
"Things have changed since then," Gwen insists. She's not sure why she's so adamant that Tosh's body go to her family. She thinks someone should have closure and she knows it's not going to be her. "We've changed! It's not all about Torchwood, anymore, Jack, it's about us. We're a family, aren't we?"
"It's always about Torchwood," Jack says.
"Is this what's going to happen to us, too?" she presses. "I'll die and you'll take my things from Rhys and lock my body away? Is this what's going to happen to Ianto? Are you going to do that to his memory too? Don't you--"
Jack holds up a hand. For a moment, she thinks he's going to slap her, but he just holds it there, eyes cold and hard.
"Think very carefully about what you say next," he says, his voice barely higher than a whisper. "Think about what you're using him to gain. Is it worth it, Gwen? Do you really want to demean him like that?"
Gwen swallows the rest of her sentence. Jack's right, of course. Jack's always fucking right, and she almost wants to defy him out of spite, but he knows exactly what buttons to push to keep her from stepping out of line. Ianto is her best friend and she loves him like a brother. He's been through enough shit without her pulling him down to her level.
"It's not fair," Gwen says, and her voice cracks. Jack's body seems to sag, but he doesn't respond, merely turns around and stalks back towards his office. Gwen turns to follow, but neither of them are paying attention and at some point during their argument, Ianto has appeared from nowhere. She can't stop herself from crashing into him and isn't quick enough to save his armful of papers from scattering to the ground.
"Could you open your bloody eyes for two seconds and watch where you're going?" Ianto shouts. " Am I the only one here who--" he cuts himself off, but Gwen's already staring in shock. It's not a tone of voice he's ever taken with her before. It's certainly not a tone of voice she's heard him take with Jack. She's sure they row like any other couple, but Ianto's almost obsessive in his need to keep his private life and his work life separate, even if they both revolve around the same person.
Ianto's eyes are closed and it's painfully obvious he's trying hard to reign himself in. When he looks at them again, his face is serene, but exhausted.
"I shouldn't have yelled. I apologize," he says. "I'll just clean these up." He kneels to the floor and starts to meticulously gather the papers together. Gwen can only stare. Jack has disappeared, and when he reappears a moment later, Gwen finds herself falling to her knees to help, even as Ianto shoos her away.
"It's my job, after all," he says, as if it wasn't their incompetence that made him drop everything in the first place.
Jack places a hand on her shoulder and gestures for her to stand up. He takes her place, rubbing Ianto's back soothingly but making no move to help.
She almost misses the way he palms the hypodermic needle as Ianto gets unsteadily to his feet.
"Jack," she says quietly. She doesn't like this. She doesn't think Ianto would approve of whatever it was that Jack just did, but Jack ignores her and follows Ianto downstairs, his pace slow and measured and a solid five feet behind Ianto all the way through the doors and out of sight.
They're gone a good fifteen minutes, but Gwen can't bring herself to do anything in their absence. She tells herself it's because she needs an update from Jack, but her head is pounding and her lungs are burning with suppressed emotion. She wants an excuse not to think, but she spends the entire fifteen minutes worrying about what's going to happen when Jack and Ianto reappear.
When they do return, Jack is carrying Ianto's limp body in his arms. It looks ludicrious; Ianto is nearly as tall as Jack and his arms and legs droop out of Jack's grasp. Jack has to walk sideways through the entry way to avoiding banging Ianto's head.
"What did you do to him, Jack?" she asks quietly.
Jack ignores her and walks Ianto precariously up the stairs, across the Hub, and over to the couch. He tucks a blanket over Ianto and stares at him for a long time before he answers.
"I gave him a sedative," Jack says. He turns to look at her, hands shoved in his pockets. "He needs to sleep."
"He agreed to that?" Gwen asks. She knows that Ianto's agreement is moot, but the sharp taste of opposition is still on her tongue and if she doesn't give into it, she'll have to give into the tears again. She's so fucking sick of crying.
"It doesn't matter," Jack says. "He'd never agree to it. You know that." Jack covers his face with his hands and when he drops them, his eyes are wet. Gwen wants him to send her home. She wants to suggest it to him, to say, Take him back to his flat and we'll start fresh tomorrow, but they can't do that. The city is in shambles. They're to blame. They can't abandon it, no matter how much she'd like to.
"Let him rest," Jack says. He turns away, but not before she sees the glitter of a tear-track on his face. "You take UNIT, I'll take the Mayor's office. No, scratch that. I'll take UNIT and you can take the Mayor's office. The Mayor hates me."
"Sure," Gwen says. She swallows back her own tears and the rest of the argument.
It's not the easiest day she's ever had at Torchwood. Each day after Tosh and Owen gets harder and harder. There are bits of them everywhere, all over the Hub. One of Tosh's hair ties is sitting on the soap dish in the ladies' room. One of Owen's scrub shirts hangs from an awkward angle from the door knob to the locker room. She's afraid to touch their things because she still can't believe they're gone and can't bring herself to be the one to make it official. She hates herself for leaving that task to Ianto and Jack, but sometimes she needs to be selfish. God knows Jack is.
She bites her lip after she thinks that, bites it hard enough to bleed. Jack is the most generous person she knows, save for maybe Ianto, and she knows, she knows that he has reason for doing the things he does, keeping things away from them. She knows how much guilt he feels that his brother and his former lover caused this destruction. She knows he carries Tosh and Owen's deaths and the deaths of everyone who's come before them.
It doesn't make it any easier to look at him.
At eight o'clock, after a day on the phones and in the sewers, after giving Ianto another shot and screaming at Jack for hanging up on Martha Jones, after crying first in the ladies room and then in the tourist office, Gwen climbs the stairs to Jack's office. Her footsteps are heavy. She makes sure her trainers pound against the catwalk as she goes to the door. For all that she normally pressures Jack into embracing his humanity, she's seen enough of his tears to last the rest of her life.
He's sitting at his desk, staring down at a paper on the top of it. She clears her throat twice before he looks up.
"I think you should take Ianto home and stay there," she says. Jack stares at her as if she's speaking Swahili. "For the night," she elaborates. "Don't think I don't know you've been keeping him here ever since--ever since."
"His choice," Jack says. His voice is hoarse. "I didn't ask him. He just stayed."
"Of course he stayed," Gwen says without thinking, "he loves you."
She covers her mouth with one hand after she says it, expecting an awkward silence or, worse, a quick dismissal. Jack just laughs. It's not a happy sound.
"I know," he says. "I--you know I love all of you, right?" Gwen nods, her hand still clasping her mouth. She doesn't remind him that there is no all of them anymore, just her and Ianto and two ghosts. "He--" Jack falters and looks back down at his desk. "He knows?" Gwen nods again, more certain this time. "Did Tosh and Owen?"
"I think so," says Gwen. She hopes she's not lying. "Take him to his flat. Come back tomorrow. There's nothing we can do tonight that can't wait."
He doesn't answer her, but he stands up and grabs his coat, staring down at it for a long time before shrugging it onto his shoulders. She knows she should offer to help get Ianto out to his car, to shut down the Hub for the night, but she needs to be away. She's spent so much time away these past few days, away mentally, away physically when she could manage. Jack's grief overwhelms even her own and Ianto's passive silence breaks her heart. She needs to see the world. She needs to understand that this isn't the end. She needs to see that people are going about their jobs, going to the shops, fighting and kissing and walking and talking. She needs to remember that the sun still rises and the world goes on and the grief in the Hub is almost palapable. It amplifies her own and makes her chest ache and she needs to get away.
So she goes.
She doesn't remember getting her purse and her jacket. She doesn't remember kissing Ianto's forehead or taking the lift up to the tourist office. She doesn't remember the walk through the quiet Cardiff streets.
She remembers home. She remembers Rhys.
Rhys is waiting for her at the door to the flat. He has a cup of tea and he holds her against his chest as she weeps again. Her eyes are sore from the constant tears. Her throat is still raw. She's sick of crying, but crying with Rhys is different. Rhys wasn't there. Rhys isn't mourning. Rhys doesn't expect anything of her and Rhys won't look at her with guilty eyes. He just sits with her and lets her cry. He brushes her hair back and murmurs quietly. With Rhys, she doesn't feel guilty for surviving or weak for mourning, she just feels, to the tips of her toes, thankful that she's alive and thankful that she has someone to hold her.
She wraps her arms more tightly around him and hopes that Jack and Ianto are holding each other.
hoping that somebody hears my call
There are about six dozen reasons that Jack should stay at the Hub, but without Ianto to quietly remind him of them, it's easy to shove them aside when Gwen stands in front of him, not quite looking at him, and implores him to leave.
"Take him to his flat," she says, with a glance over her shoulder at the Hub atrium where Ianto is still unconscious on the couch. "Come back tomorrow. There's nothing we can do tonight that can't wait."
There's still a protest on his lips, but he remembers the wet spot on his shoulder from Ianto's tears. He can still feel it, even though it's been hours since he drugged Ianto into a dreamless slumber. If he drops Ianto off at the flat and then comes back to the Hub, Ianto will only return as soon as he wakes up. Better to stay there with him. Better to watch over him, like he should have from the start.
They're hollow excuses, empty justification for his own selfishness, but he clings to them defiantly and shrugs his coat on. Gwen is already gone.
It feels like it's been years since he put the Hub into overnight hibernation, but it was the night before the warehouse explosions that started this all. It was less than a week ago that his fingers typed in these computer commands, that he let Ianto lure him away with the promise of a truly terrible film and a bottle of Scotch. He remembers the way Toshiko hid her smile behind her computer screen as she helped him speed through the process so he could join Ianto in the carpark.
Ianto's been drugged against his will and Gwen's already fled to her husband and her illusion of a normal life. It takes Jack twice as long to shut down the systems.
There are road blocks up and entire streets that have been reduced to loose gravel and mounds of debris. Jack needs to turn the SUV around three times, and eventually just hits the flashing blue lights and drives over the chunks of tarmac and dirt, over the twisted remains of a streetlamp and the general unidentifiable rubble that litters the street. The SUV has seen worse--a month ago, Ianto and Tosh lectured Owen for an hour after he drove the SUV pell-mell through a rough open field in the Welsh countryside, tearing up the suspension. Jack is barely inching the vehicle over the debris, but it still hurts more than that rough ride from four weeks earlier.
It says something about the horrors that Cardiff has seen in the past week that no one comments when Jack carries Ianto, unconscious, down the street from the SUV and into his building. There aren't many people out on the streets as it is--the street lights aren't reliable yet and the looting hasn't been too bad. He assumes that people still remember the wild animals that were loose in the street the night of the terrorist attacks.
Wild animals. Terrorist attacks. Jack wonders if he thinks those things to remind himself that no one else can know what really happened or if he thinks them because he yearns for them to be true.
Ianto is too light--Jack wonders how much he's eaten since this started. He should have checked up on Ianto. Yet another way he's failed his team.
Ianto lives on the second floor and Jack has no problem carrying him upstairs and unlocking the door. He's surprised Ianto is still asleep, but maybe he shouldn't be. Ianto can fade into the background like the best sort of butler and he's made himself scarce in the aftermath of the disaster, in the aftermath of Gray. He's always there with a cup of coffee or much-needed file or a hand to hold, but he hasn't been present. Jack should have seen this coming from the start, but instead he leaned on Ianto, expected just a little too much from him.
He tucks Ianto into bed, gently and efficiently removing his suit and shoes. He covers him with the duvet and smoothes the wrinkles out before returning to the living room. Every bone in his body says that he should run. He should retreat to a rooftop, or better yet, another city. He should retcon Ianto and Gwen, let them live their lives peacefully, and escape this city. He spent a hundred years thinking of the rift as a tool to get what he wanted. He knows now that it's nothing more than a curse. Cardiff will crumble again and again, no matter how hard he tries to stop it. It's going to kill or destroy everyone who gets in its way. It's just a matter of time before he loses Gwen, before he loses Ianto.
He can't run, though. He's run away from too many things in his life and he knows, if nothing else, Gwen and Ianto would tear the world apart to find him again. He let them in too deep. He was never supposed to make connections on this fucking planet. Bide his time, wait for the Doctor. But the Doctor didn't have answers and his past couldn't be fixed by a conversation. He's lived a hundred lives and he has millions left to go, and sometimes it's just so lonely that he can't stand it. He knows he's not good for Ianto, for Gwen, for Martha, for Torchwood in general, but sometimes observing from the outside hurts just as much as losing on the inside.
Ianto's building doesn't have roof access, so Jack makes due with the bay window in his living room. There's a gap in the buildings across the street and he can see the edge of the city skyline.
Well, what's left of it.
It's too dark to make out the difference in shape--rolling blackouts take out most of downtown after ten pm--but he knows it's there, instinctively. He's been in Cardiff for a long time. He watched the city build upwards and outwards out of nothing. He watched the skyline morph into a thousand different things as the years passed. He's spend dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of nights taking it all in, wondering why he cared so much to protect it.
He's done a shitty job. The city is bleeding and it's his fault.
He paces in front of the window, perches himself on the arm of the chair next to it. He watches the quality of light change and wonders if it's from the flickering power grid or the passage of time. He rests his elbows on the window ledge and, finally, stands stock-still listening to the chorus of barking dogs, wailing alarms, and distant car horns.
He's tried not to think of Gray in the days following the end of the world. Thinking of Gray means taking the blame, and while he knows it's his fault--his brother who set them up, his former lover who laid the explosive charges, his lack of foresight that caught them all off-guard--confronting that fact hurts more than he can handle right now. He sees the mottled bruises on Ianto's shoulder, the red rims around Gwen's eyes when she sneaks off to cry, and he has to bite back the flood of apologies. The last time the world nearly ended, he was the one who was wronged. This time he might as well have set off the explosions himself. He doesn't know how they can bear to look at him.
He hears the floorboards creak, but doesn't turn around. A glance at his watch tells him that more than an hour has passed since he nestled Ianto into bed. It's possible the sedative did more harm than good--Ianto's sleep schedule is even more convoluted than usual, now. He slept from ten am to almost midnight and he'll probably be tired again by the time they get to work in the morning.
"Rise and shine, Mr. Jones," he says softly. The footsteps continue, surer, now, and it's not long before Ianto is standing next to him. His hair is rumpled and his face is criss-crossed with pillow creases. He has the duvet wrapped around his shoulders and he looks so young that Jack has to blink back tears. This is a child. A child whom he is leading to the slaughter.
"You drugged me," Ianto says, blinking up at him with a muted, distant sort of outrage.
"I did," Jack agrees. "I'm sorry. You were hurting."
"Always hurting," Ianto say automatically, and his eyes widen as soon as the words leave his mouth. "I mean--"
"No," Jack says. "It's okay. I know what you mean."
"I'm happy," Ianto insists. "With work. With you. I just--"
"I know," Jack says again. "It's been a hard week."
Ianto laughs, but it sounds like it hurts him to do so. It hurts Jack to listen to it.
"That's one way of putting it," he says. He inches closer to Jack, and Jack gives into temptation and puts an arm around his waist. "See anything interesting out there?"
"No weevils," Jack says. "No looting. No violence. I think everyone's asleep."
"I think everyone's still scared shitless, personally." Ianto's relaxed against him, eyes half-lidded. He sounds like himself for the first time since they watched Tosh bleed out on the floor of the autopsy room. Jack wonders if he's back to normal or if this is a drug-induced reprieve and he'll be back to repressing himself when they return to the Hub in the morning.
"Before," Jack says abruptly. "In the archives."
He can feel Ianto shifting and stiffening. This is not a conversation that Ianto wants to have. Jack knows that. But Ianto won't say anything, and although it's cruel and a little selfish, Jack is going to take advantage of that.
"When you asked how I manage," Jack says. "When you said--"
"Jack," Ianto says. "I didn't--"
"No." Jack squeezes his shoulder, but he doesn't look away from the window. "You asked how I manage. And I don't. I didn't. I don't have any other choice. I can't die. For years I couldn't leave. I didn't have a choice. I tried not to get attached, but...."
"You're you and you always get attached," Ianto says.
"Yeah," Jack says. "Yeah, I am. I do. But I could convince myself I was waiting for the Doctor. After I asked to be brought back here, I didn't have that excuse. I couldn't pretend you didn't matter--all of you--because it was my choice."
He leans over and buries his nose in Ianto's hair. He smells like detergent and fabric softener. It seems like months ago that he forced Jack to help him put fresh sheets on the bed, but it was the morning the world went to hell. It was less than a week ago.
"It hurts," he murmurs against Ianto's scalp. "So much. It hurts more than it's hurt for a long time, but you asked how I manage and I manage because I have you. I have you and Gwen and I can't lose you too. Not yet. So I have to keep going."
Ianto is silent and unmoving in his arms and he wonders if he's gone too far, if it's too much. But he shifts, slightly, and then Ianto's arms are around his back.
"We can't--" Ianto stops himself. "We need to... I know we're mourning." He speaks carefully, choosing each word, composing each sentence with intent. "But we need to fix ourselves. This isn't--we're not speaking to each other. We're all screaming into a void. You fight with Gwen, Gwen cries to me, I... handle things my own way. But we're just acting as a means to an end. We need to... interact." He pauses. "Is this--am I being clear? Am I--"
Jack kisses him.
It's the best kiss they've had in days. He can't taste Ianto's pain or desperation, he's not kissing as a way to avoid talking, he's not kissing as an apology. He's kissing Ianto because, at this moment, he has never loved him more. He has never been more caring and brilliant and right. He's kissing Ianto because he's missed him, missed this, and because Ianto is twenty-five years old and shouldn't have the strength to hold the three of them afloat, but he does. He can step up where Jack has failed so miserably, and it's probably selfish to rely on that, but he's too tired to be generous.
"I've missed you," Ianto confesses almost silently when they pull away. "Gwen, too."
"I hope you don't miss Gwen like that," Jack says. His leer isn't up to its usual standards, but if Ianto's laugh is any indication, he gets points for intent.
"You know this is going to get worse before it gets better," Jack tells him.
"I know," Ianto says.
"And just because we see this clearly now doesn't mean we're going to walk into work tomorrow and be able to operate like everything is back to normal," Jack says.
"I know."
"You know we have a lot of work ahead of us," Jack says.
"I know."
Jack takes Ianto's chin and meets his gaze straight on. "You know I--Ianto, I do--"
Ianto steps back and closes his eyes. He lets out a long, shaky breath. He holds up a hand and Jack closes his mouth and frowns.
"I... no," Ianto says. "Don't say that. Please. Not tonight." He opens his eyes again and shakes his head. "If you--say it tomorrow. If you still want to say it tomorrow, say it tomorrow, but I just--I can't. Not tonight. Not after everything. Please."
Jack sighs, but nods and steps forward, back into Ianto's personal space. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I can do that. But tomorrow--tomorrow we're going to have to start packing up Owen and Tosh's things."
Ianto swallows. "Tomorrow?" he asks.
"It's time," Jack says quietly.
Ianto rests his head on Jack's shoulder. "Okay," he says, letting out another long breath. "Okay."
The guilt isn't gone. The pain is still sharp. He's nearly drowning in sorrow, but he's survived worse and he'll survive this.
"Let's go back to bed," he says to Ianto. "We can work it out in the morning."
With one last look at the broken skyline, he steers them back to the bedroom, duvet trailing behind. Things will look better in the morning. They have to.