PTSD: Post Torchwood Stress Disorder (3/7)
Title: PTSD: Post Torchwood Stress Disorder (3/7)
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with Owen, Gwen and Tosh)
Rating: R
Words: 3279 (this part)
Notes: See part one. Seriously, they threaten to overwhelm the story. But I do need to say that kensieg once again did the crack beta. Any remaining crack is wholly my fault.
Summary: It's been two and a half years since Canary Wharf. It's been a year since Lisa. And Jack is just now realizing what the real toll has all been on Ianto and the other survivors of Torchwood One. Now he needs to fix a big thing done badly before anyone else dies.
The next morning they were all clustered around the conference table sorting through and prioritizing the latest gifts from the rift when Ianto’s mobile rang. He glanced at the caller I.D. and excused himself. Jack watched through the glass as he made his way to his desk. He’d only glimpsed the screen for a second, but he thought it had said ‘Meaghan’. Which meant it was likely more information about the funeral Ianto had learned about yesterday.
Jack made a face and dismissed everyone, ignoring the questions and complaints that they weren’t done. He almost had to get short with Tosh who finally clued in that the phone call, the sudden dismissal and Ianto’s sullen mood that morning were all tied together. And of course she didn’t want to let him go until he’d explained.
By the time he’d managed to, more or less politely, convince her to go away and mind her own business, Ianto was heading back towards Jack’s office.
Ianto gave Tosh a tight smile as she passed and she returned it. Ianto fell onto the couch in Jack’s office and handed over a sheet of paper. “This is the funeral information. I’m going to take a hotel room in London for the night and I’ll come back the next morning, if you don’t mind.”
Jack moved from his chair to sit next to Ianto. “Why don’t you let me go with you?”
Ianto looked up at him like that hadn’t made any sense. “Why would you want to go to the funeral of someone you’ve never met?”
“I wouldn’t be going for him, Ianto,” Jack said pointedly.
Ianto suddenly understood, but two and a half years of dealing with this on his own had made him independent to a fault. “Oh. I appreciate the thought, I do, but…”
“But what?” Jack pressed.
Ianto pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Jack had been so understanding of everything that he’d been going through lately. He honestly believed that Jack wanted to do this for him - make the trek out to London and attend the funeral of a total stranger - just so Ianto wouldn’t have to be alone. Deep inside he truly wanted Jack to go with him, but he wasn’t sure how to admit that without making it look like he wasn’t handling the aftermath of Torchwood One less than perfectly. He couldn’t understand why, after eight other suicides and a total of sixteen deaths, including Lisa’s; why after two and a half years that included ten weeks in quarantine and ‘programming’, he suddenly felt like the world was coming down around him again.
“Look, this says the funeral is the day after tomorrow. You just let me know sometime before then. I don’t want to intrude, but you don’t have to do this alone any more.” Jack squeezed Ianto’s shoulder as he got up and then left him the office to collect himself.
Predictably, Ianto disappeared into the archives for the rest of the day. Jack left him alone and convinced everyone else to do the same. They fended for themselves for lunch and no one bitched that Ianto hadn’t come around with coffee. At a little after two, Ianto became annoyed with everyone pussy-footing around him, but not actually bothering to ask what was wrong. He went to Jack’s office to say he was going home. He knew Jack wouldn’t stop him at this point. He’d never taken time off in the middle of the day like this before and he’d never take advantage of his personal relationship with Jack in order to curry favors, but with everything that had been going on lately, he knew that Jack would let him have some privacy if he needed it badly enough to ask for it. And he had finally reached that point. He needed to be alone to think and sort himself out; the tension was really starting to unravel his nerve.
“I’ve put on the afternoon coffee, but if you don’t mind, sir, I’m going to go home a bit early. I need to get a hotel in London and I need to make a few calls.” As if it knew it was being talked about, his mobile rang.
Jack waved at the phone. “Get that and then we’ll talk.”
Ianto answered the phone and then paced to a corner of Jack’s office where he could have something like privacy. A few minutes later he punched off the phone and fell onto the sofa. The annoyance that had taken precedence before was now replaced with concern and something Jack wanted to call fear.
“Jack… I think… I think I may need your help with something.”
Jack set his pen down on the file he hadn’t really been reading. “What’s wrong?”
“Meaghan and Elizabeth have both been trying to get ahold of Andrew all day and his phone and mobile both go to voicemail. The other odd thing is that his Letter - like the one I got yesterday? - Andrew’s came back to Meaghan today. Apparently he no longer lives at the address he’s been at since before Canary Wharf.” Ianto was fidgeting with his phone as he spoke. “He’s supposed to check in with Jacklyn and she hasn’t heard from him in over a week. She told Meaghan that she was starting to worry since he’s never been late. Now we’re all panicking because no one can get hold of him.”
“’Check in’, what do you mean?” Jack spun his chair to both face Ianto and put his back to the door. Ianto had used that term the night before, but in all that needed to be discussed, Jack hadn’t had a chance to have him explain that one.
Ianto studied the floor between his shoes. “For the first few weeks after we were released, we were calling each other and seeing each other pretty constantly. Ethan and Andrew were helping me deal with Lisa and Jacklyn and Adam were together, but… as we all started to re-form our lives… we started drifting apart. And then when Adam… when he killed himself, we decided that we needed to keep track of each other, make sure that everyone is okay. So Jacklyn set up a system where every Sunday we’d call each other and check in. It’s a circular rota. If Monday morning comes and we haven’t heard from whomever’s supposed to call us, we call the next person down the line and try and track back to what’s happened to the person missing. It’s how we learned about Karen. She was supposed to call Michael, but never did. The schedule back then was that I was supposed to call her, but couldn’t reach her. Michael back-tracked to me to see if I had reached her and that was when we knew something was wrong. I had her mother’s number for the weekends she went out to Kent to stay with her parents, so I called her mum…” He looked away and blew out a breath. “And I spent the next night writing letters. Her mum had found her dead in the bathtub.”
Jack found himself itching to throw something. How had Ianto been going through all this right under his nose for two years without him ever noticing? He forced himself to get back to the crisis at hand. “And now it’s Monday afternoon and no one has heard from Andrew,” he summarized.
“Right. I think under normal circumstances we wouldn’t panic for another day or two, but so close to Marc and the fact that his letter came back…The girls have been calling all day and they’ve called every number they have to contact him. He didn’t go into work this morning. He didn’t even call to say he’d be out. Not helping matters is that Andrew’s brother called Jacklyn asking if she had heard from him.”
“So we’ve got a missing person,” Jack agreed. He leaned forward and waited until Ianto met his eyes. “You realize that at this point the best way to do this is to tell at least Tosh and Gwen. Gwen can go through normal police channels and Tosh can search CCTV and look for any kind of electronic fingerprints.”
Ianto sighed. He hadn’t wanted to burden everyone else with all this. It was bad enough that Jack seemed distracted by what he was going through. But he also knew that Torchwood’s access to CCTV and other records would be their best chance of finding the missing man. “Might as well tell Owen too. We’re trying to not actively annoy the crap out of each other any more.”
Jack had to grin. “Beats having you shooting at each other.”
Ianto gave Jack the smallest of smiles in return. “I rather suspect Owen would quite agree with you on that point.”
() () () () () () ()
Jack pulled everyone off their current tasks and herded them up to the conference room. They all came in and fell into a chair at the table, except Ianto. He sat in the spare chair in the corner and tried very hard to disappear into the glass wall.
Jack summed up all the important bits of the Torchwood Survivors Network (as he’d mentally dubbed them and their efforts to help each other where both Torchwood and the government had failed them) for the assembled group. It had looked like Tosh was doing everything in her power at one point to keep her seat when she clearly wanted to jump up and hug the stuffing out of Ianto. Jack wondered when they had gotten so close. He had the oddest sense that they may have bonded over the “death by Torchwood” fates of not only their co-worker Suzie, but also their respective girlfriends.
“I have a friend who works the beat in London. Probably not the same area, but I can have him put in a wellness call to the address you have. At least let us know if anyone’s still living there?” Gwen was looking back and forth, not sure if she should be addressing Jack or Ianto at that point.
“Go,” Jack told her and she bounded out of the room, already pulling her mobile out.
“Give me as much information as you have, Ianto, and I’ll check to see if his credit cards have been used, if he’s checked into a hotel, whatever.” Tosh slid a note pad across the table to where Ianto could reach it.
Owen shrugged. “If we knew where to start I could look at CCTV footage, but do we even know when or where to look?”
Ianto was still scribbling down everything he could think of that would help Tosh. Name, birthdate, parents’ names… whatever he’d learned over the five years of knowing Andrew. He didn’t look up at Owen’s question.
“Ianto?” Jack asked, apparently deciding that the question needed an answer.
“I don’t know. I’ve given Tosh the name of the company he was working for - it’s a computer hardware company that does huge mainframes - but he lived in a highly residential area just on the edge of London. I doubt there’s much CCTV coverage out there.” He handed the notepad back to Tosh.
Owen was clicking his pen in a really annoying rhythm. “Here’s the thing,” Owen said slowly. “He worked for Torchwood. He worked in the information systems. He has to have a pretty good idea how Torchwood tracks people. We can’t be all that different from London in that - though I’m guessing they had whole teams just for that purpose.”
“Your point?” Ianto asked exasperatedly. He’d held it together through so much for so long, but he really was quite at the end of his rope. First Marc’s death and now Andrew’s disappearance, not to mention finding himself talking to Jack about things he’d never spoken to anyone about, at least not to anyone who hadn’t been there. It was more than he keep a grip on.
“If he doesn’t want to be found…” Owen said slowly, clicking his pen again.
“So… what?” Ianto snapped. “Because he might actually be thinking clearly enough to elude Torchwood detection we shouldn’t bother looking? Because historically speaking, when any one of us can’t be found, thinking clearly is not bloody likely!”
He stormed out of the conference room without registering the confused and slightly abashed look on Owen’s face.
Jack found him leaning on the railing in the stairwell to the lower archives, arms on the rail, head on his arms, breathing harshly.
“Let’s go take a walk,” Jack said, resting his hand on Ianto’s shoulders.
“I need to calm down and then apologize to Owen. He had a point, I shouldn’t have snapped on him for saying exactly what I was thinking.” Ianto felt torn between wanting to shrug Jack’s hand off in order to hold onto his anger - because the anger was starting to become infinitely more manageable than the fear that in less than four days they would have lost two members of their group - and wanting to turn to Jack and bury his face in Jack’s shoulder until the world somehow sorted itself out for him.
“Owen will be here when we get back.” Jack held out Ianto’s wool overcoat and for the first time Ianto realized Jack was already in his greatcoat. “You need to blow off some steam, so let’s go.”
“I should stay and help Tosh -“
“Tosh is running everything she can with the information you gave her. Why don’t we walk and you can tell me what you know about this guy so we can try to figure out what might have happened.” Jack held the coat out to him again.
Ianto finally nodded and let Jack help him on with it and then lead him up to the front door. He told the girls that they were going out to talk and that they both had their mobiles should anything come up.
They walked in silence for about fifteen minutes. Ianto finally realized that Jack was content to wait him out and he knew that they didn’t have time to wait. Tosh and Gwen were doing their thing, now it was time for him to do what he could.
“Andrew was the only other member of the archiving team to survive. He was the computer systems designer. My job was to compile all the information that came in from the different divisions, to figure out how and what they’d want to access, both in an artifact database and from the artifacts themselves. Andrew’s job was to build a computer that could do that quickly and efficiently. Three other people were on the programming end and the other two people on our team were actually former museum curators and librarians who helped us set up a physical archive to keep things safe and accessible. Andrew and I were actually pretty good friends until… well… Lisa.”
Jack raised an eyebrow but stayed silent.
“Andrew started at Torchwood about seven months before I did. He met Lisa somewhere along the line and developed quite a crush on her. She didn’t reciprocate.”
“That’s not your fault,” Jack said.
“No, but I knew how he felt when I started seeing her. It pretty much happened by accident, but I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t thrilled.” Ianto hunched into his overcoat.
“How do you date someone by accident? I mean, really, if anyone was going to manage that one, you’d think it would have been me.” Jack gave Ianto a silly grin.
“You bother with dating?” Ianto answered with the kind of smile Jack had wondered if he’d ever see again.
Jack laughed at first, but then realized that Ianto, of all people shouldn’t be asking him that. Yet another thing he’d neglected without realizing it.
Ianto took a deep breath. “Torchwood London liked to have grand celebrations of various things. Holidays, big scientific breakthroughs, things like that. Apparently Andrew had been stalking her quite obnoxiously at one of them, so when she managed to give him the slip she grabbed me and did that ‘pretend you’re talking to me’ thing. I told her that if I did that I wouldn’t have to pretend because I would be talking to her. She thought that was funny. She laughed and then when … when she saw him coming up again…” Ianto’s voice trailed off and he looked out over the bay.
“What’d she do?” Jack asked taking Ianto’s arm and linking their elbows.
Ianto leaned against him as they continued. “She snogged me senseless.”
Jack laughed. “Fantastic!”
“I certainly thought so,” Ianto said with a smile. It was the first time Jack had ever seen him genuinely smile at the thought of Lisa. “So anyway, once he took the hint and buggered off, she spent the rest of the night apologizing to me. I kept trying to tell her that I had absolutely no objection to being kissed by a beautiful woman.”
“Smart man,” Jack laughed.
“Well, apparently she still felt badly, because the next day when I came in there was a crystal vase with a single red rose in it sitting on my desk with another apology.” Ianto studied the cobblestones under their feet as they walked. “So I went to her office and said that if it would make her feel better, I’d take her out to dinner and then let her kiss me again, so that things will have been done in proper order.”
“That’s cute,” Jack told him affectionately.
“Andrew didn’t think so. He liked to imply that she was only dating me because she was trying to make him jealous.” Ianto shrugged, dislodging his arm from Jack’s. Jack slid his hand down and wove their fingers together, keeping them connected as they walked. “It made our working relationship a bit rough at times, but when it came down to it…” Ianto took a deep breath. “He was the one who was able to help me turn the conversion unit into a life support system. Lisa knew… When she was awake and lucid she told us what she needed, but he actually did the rewiring and the meshing of the medical tech and the conversion unit. When it came down to it, he put all the pettiness aside in order to keep her alive.” He stopped and turned to face Jack. “I owe him Jack. I owe him more than I can repay. It’s not his fault that we couldn’t undo the conversion. Ethan kept the human part of her alive, Andrew the mechanical.”
Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto, “And you kept her fighting, didn’t you? Kept her from giving up or going insane?”
Ianto pulled abruptly away. “Lot of good it did me.” He began walking again, his anger from before resurfacing.
Jack ran to catch up. “Hey, hey, hey.” He grabbed Ianto’s arm. “You did everything you could and then some. It’s no one’s fault that it wasn’t enough. The Cybermen were the ones who hurt her and were responsible for her death.” He had to hope that after all this time, after all the trust they’d worked so hard to build after Lisa’s death, that Ianto wasn’t still hating him for the fact that he’d been responsible for her ultimate destruction. For the end of his hope.
Ianto sighed; his shoulders slumped. “I know. I’m sorry.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m not angry at you, I just…” He took another deep breath. “We need to find him, Jack. I owe him.”
Jack wrapped his arm around Ianto’s shoulder, kissing a cold cheek. “We’ll do everything we can.”
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with Owen, Gwen and Tosh)
Rating: R
Words: 3279 (this part)
Notes: See part one. Seriously, they threaten to overwhelm the story. But I do need to say that kensieg once again did the crack beta. Any remaining crack is wholly my fault.
Summary: It's been two and a half years since Canary Wharf. It's been a year since Lisa. And Jack is just now realizing what the real toll has all been on Ianto and the other survivors of Torchwood One. Now he needs to fix a big thing done badly before anyone else dies.
The next morning they were all clustered around the conference table sorting through and prioritizing the latest gifts from the rift when Ianto’s mobile rang. He glanced at the caller I.D. and excused himself. Jack watched through the glass as he made his way to his desk. He’d only glimpsed the screen for a second, but he thought it had said ‘Meaghan’. Which meant it was likely more information about the funeral Ianto had learned about yesterday.
Jack made a face and dismissed everyone, ignoring the questions and complaints that they weren’t done. He almost had to get short with Tosh who finally clued in that the phone call, the sudden dismissal and Ianto’s sullen mood that morning were all tied together. And of course she didn’t want to let him go until he’d explained.
By the time he’d managed to, more or less politely, convince her to go away and mind her own business, Ianto was heading back towards Jack’s office.
Ianto gave Tosh a tight smile as she passed and she returned it. Ianto fell onto the couch in Jack’s office and handed over a sheet of paper. “This is the funeral information. I’m going to take a hotel room in London for the night and I’ll come back the next morning, if you don’t mind.”
Jack moved from his chair to sit next to Ianto. “Why don’t you let me go with you?”
Ianto looked up at him like that hadn’t made any sense. “Why would you want to go to the funeral of someone you’ve never met?”
“I wouldn’t be going for him, Ianto,” Jack said pointedly.
Ianto suddenly understood, but two and a half years of dealing with this on his own had made him independent to a fault. “Oh. I appreciate the thought, I do, but…”
“But what?” Jack pressed.
Ianto pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Jack had been so understanding of everything that he’d been going through lately. He honestly believed that Jack wanted to do this for him - make the trek out to London and attend the funeral of a total stranger - just so Ianto wouldn’t have to be alone. Deep inside he truly wanted Jack to go with him, but he wasn’t sure how to admit that without making it look like he wasn’t handling the aftermath of Torchwood One less than perfectly. He couldn’t understand why, after eight other suicides and a total of sixteen deaths, including Lisa’s; why after two and a half years that included ten weeks in quarantine and ‘programming’, he suddenly felt like the world was coming down around him again.
“Look, this says the funeral is the day after tomorrow. You just let me know sometime before then. I don’t want to intrude, but you don’t have to do this alone any more.” Jack squeezed Ianto’s shoulder as he got up and then left him the office to collect himself.
Predictably, Ianto disappeared into the archives for the rest of the day. Jack left him alone and convinced everyone else to do the same. They fended for themselves for lunch and no one bitched that Ianto hadn’t come around with coffee. At a little after two, Ianto became annoyed with everyone pussy-footing around him, but not actually bothering to ask what was wrong. He went to Jack’s office to say he was going home. He knew Jack wouldn’t stop him at this point. He’d never taken time off in the middle of the day like this before and he’d never take advantage of his personal relationship with Jack in order to curry favors, but with everything that had been going on lately, he knew that Jack would let him have some privacy if he needed it badly enough to ask for it. And he had finally reached that point. He needed to be alone to think and sort himself out; the tension was really starting to unravel his nerve.
“I’ve put on the afternoon coffee, but if you don’t mind, sir, I’m going to go home a bit early. I need to get a hotel in London and I need to make a few calls.” As if it knew it was being talked about, his mobile rang.
Jack waved at the phone. “Get that and then we’ll talk.”
Ianto answered the phone and then paced to a corner of Jack’s office where he could have something like privacy. A few minutes later he punched off the phone and fell onto the sofa. The annoyance that had taken precedence before was now replaced with concern and something Jack wanted to call fear.
“Jack… I think… I think I may need your help with something.”
Jack set his pen down on the file he hadn’t really been reading. “What’s wrong?”
“Meaghan and Elizabeth have both been trying to get ahold of Andrew all day and his phone and mobile both go to voicemail. The other odd thing is that his Letter - like the one I got yesterday? - Andrew’s came back to Meaghan today. Apparently he no longer lives at the address he’s been at since before Canary Wharf.” Ianto was fidgeting with his phone as he spoke. “He’s supposed to check in with Jacklyn and she hasn’t heard from him in over a week. She told Meaghan that she was starting to worry since he’s never been late. Now we’re all panicking because no one can get hold of him.”
“’Check in’, what do you mean?” Jack spun his chair to both face Ianto and put his back to the door. Ianto had used that term the night before, but in all that needed to be discussed, Jack hadn’t had a chance to have him explain that one.
Ianto studied the floor between his shoes. “For the first few weeks after we were released, we were calling each other and seeing each other pretty constantly. Ethan and Andrew were helping me deal with Lisa and Jacklyn and Adam were together, but… as we all started to re-form our lives… we started drifting apart. And then when Adam… when he killed himself, we decided that we needed to keep track of each other, make sure that everyone is okay. So Jacklyn set up a system where every Sunday we’d call each other and check in. It’s a circular rota. If Monday morning comes and we haven’t heard from whomever’s supposed to call us, we call the next person down the line and try and track back to what’s happened to the person missing. It’s how we learned about Karen. She was supposed to call Michael, but never did. The schedule back then was that I was supposed to call her, but couldn’t reach her. Michael back-tracked to me to see if I had reached her and that was when we knew something was wrong. I had her mother’s number for the weekends she went out to Kent to stay with her parents, so I called her mum…” He looked away and blew out a breath. “And I spent the next night writing letters. Her mum had found her dead in the bathtub.”
Jack found himself itching to throw something. How had Ianto been going through all this right under his nose for two years without him ever noticing? He forced himself to get back to the crisis at hand. “And now it’s Monday afternoon and no one has heard from Andrew,” he summarized.
“Right. I think under normal circumstances we wouldn’t panic for another day or two, but so close to Marc and the fact that his letter came back…The girls have been calling all day and they’ve called every number they have to contact him. He didn’t go into work this morning. He didn’t even call to say he’d be out. Not helping matters is that Andrew’s brother called Jacklyn asking if she had heard from him.”
“So we’ve got a missing person,” Jack agreed. He leaned forward and waited until Ianto met his eyes. “You realize that at this point the best way to do this is to tell at least Tosh and Gwen. Gwen can go through normal police channels and Tosh can search CCTV and look for any kind of electronic fingerprints.”
Ianto sighed. He hadn’t wanted to burden everyone else with all this. It was bad enough that Jack seemed distracted by what he was going through. But he also knew that Torchwood’s access to CCTV and other records would be their best chance of finding the missing man. “Might as well tell Owen too. We’re trying to not actively annoy the crap out of each other any more.”
Jack had to grin. “Beats having you shooting at each other.”
Ianto gave Jack the smallest of smiles in return. “I rather suspect Owen would quite agree with you on that point.”
() () () () () () ()
Jack pulled everyone off their current tasks and herded them up to the conference room. They all came in and fell into a chair at the table, except Ianto. He sat in the spare chair in the corner and tried very hard to disappear into the glass wall.
Jack summed up all the important bits of the Torchwood Survivors Network (as he’d mentally dubbed them and their efforts to help each other where both Torchwood and the government had failed them) for the assembled group. It had looked like Tosh was doing everything in her power at one point to keep her seat when she clearly wanted to jump up and hug the stuffing out of Ianto. Jack wondered when they had gotten so close. He had the oddest sense that they may have bonded over the “death by Torchwood” fates of not only their co-worker Suzie, but also their respective girlfriends.
“I have a friend who works the beat in London. Probably not the same area, but I can have him put in a wellness call to the address you have. At least let us know if anyone’s still living there?” Gwen was looking back and forth, not sure if she should be addressing Jack or Ianto at that point.
“Go,” Jack told her and she bounded out of the room, already pulling her mobile out.
“Give me as much information as you have, Ianto, and I’ll check to see if his credit cards have been used, if he’s checked into a hotel, whatever.” Tosh slid a note pad across the table to where Ianto could reach it.
Owen shrugged. “If we knew where to start I could look at CCTV footage, but do we even know when or where to look?”
Ianto was still scribbling down everything he could think of that would help Tosh. Name, birthdate, parents’ names… whatever he’d learned over the five years of knowing Andrew. He didn’t look up at Owen’s question.
“Ianto?” Jack asked, apparently deciding that the question needed an answer.
“I don’t know. I’ve given Tosh the name of the company he was working for - it’s a computer hardware company that does huge mainframes - but he lived in a highly residential area just on the edge of London. I doubt there’s much CCTV coverage out there.” He handed the notepad back to Tosh.
Owen was clicking his pen in a really annoying rhythm. “Here’s the thing,” Owen said slowly. “He worked for Torchwood. He worked in the information systems. He has to have a pretty good idea how Torchwood tracks people. We can’t be all that different from London in that - though I’m guessing they had whole teams just for that purpose.”
“Your point?” Ianto asked exasperatedly. He’d held it together through so much for so long, but he really was quite at the end of his rope. First Marc’s death and now Andrew’s disappearance, not to mention finding himself talking to Jack about things he’d never spoken to anyone about, at least not to anyone who hadn’t been there. It was more than he keep a grip on.
“If he doesn’t want to be found…” Owen said slowly, clicking his pen again.
“So… what?” Ianto snapped. “Because he might actually be thinking clearly enough to elude Torchwood detection we shouldn’t bother looking? Because historically speaking, when any one of us can’t be found, thinking clearly is not bloody likely!”
He stormed out of the conference room without registering the confused and slightly abashed look on Owen’s face.
Jack found him leaning on the railing in the stairwell to the lower archives, arms on the rail, head on his arms, breathing harshly.
“Let’s go take a walk,” Jack said, resting his hand on Ianto’s shoulders.
“I need to calm down and then apologize to Owen. He had a point, I shouldn’t have snapped on him for saying exactly what I was thinking.” Ianto felt torn between wanting to shrug Jack’s hand off in order to hold onto his anger - because the anger was starting to become infinitely more manageable than the fear that in less than four days they would have lost two members of their group - and wanting to turn to Jack and bury his face in Jack’s shoulder until the world somehow sorted itself out for him.
“Owen will be here when we get back.” Jack held out Ianto’s wool overcoat and for the first time Ianto realized Jack was already in his greatcoat. “You need to blow off some steam, so let’s go.”
“I should stay and help Tosh -“
“Tosh is running everything she can with the information you gave her. Why don’t we walk and you can tell me what you know about this guy so we can try to figure out what might have happened.” Jack held the coat out to him again.
Ianto finally nodded and let Jack help him on with it and then lead him up to the front door. He told the girls that they were going out to talk and that they both had their mobiles should anything come up.
They walked in silence for about fifteen minutes. Ianto finally realized that Jack was content to wait him out and he knew that they didn’t have time to wait. Tosh and Gwen were doing their thing, now it was time for him to do what he could.
“Andrew was the only other member of the archiving team to survive. He was the computer systems designer. My job was to compile all the information that came in from the different divisions, to figure out how and what they’d want to access, both in an artifact database and from the artifacts themselves. Andrew’s job was to build a computer that could do that quickly and efficiently. Three other people were on the programming end and the other two people on our team were actually former museum curators and librarians who helped us set up a physical archive to keep things safe and accessible. Andrew and I were actually pretty good friends until… well… Lisa.”
Jack raised an eyebrow but stayed silent.
“Andrew started at Torchwood about seven months before I did. He met Lisa somewhere along the line and developed quite a crush on her. She didn’t reciprocate.”
“That’s not your fault,” Jack said.
“No, but I knew how he felt when I started seeing her. It pretty much happened by accident, but I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t thrilled.” Ianto hunched into his overcoat.
“How do you date someone by accident? I mean, really, if anyone was going to manage that one, you’d think it would have been me.” Jack gave Ianto a silly grin.
“You bother with dating?” Ianto answered with the kind of smile Jack had wondered if he’d ever see again.
Jack laughed at first, but then realized that Ianto, of all people shouldn’t be asking him that. Yet another thing he’d neglected without realizing it.
Ianto took a deep breath. “Torchwood London liked to have grand celebrations of various things. Holidays, big scientific breakthroughs, things like that. Apparently Andrew had been stalking her quite obnoxiously at one of them, so when she managed to give him the slip she grabbed me and did that ‘pretend you’re talking to me’ thing. I told her that if I did that I wouldn’t have to pretend because I would be talking to her. She thought that was funny. She laughed and then when … when she saw him coming up again…” Ianto’s voice trailed off and he looked out over the bay.
“What’d she do?” Jack asked taking Ianto’s arm and linking their elbows.
Ianto leaned against him as they continued. “She snogged me senseless.”
Jack laughed. “Fantastic!”
“I certainly thought so,” Ianto said with a smile. It was the first time Jack had ever seen him genuinely smile at the thought of Lisa. “So anyway, once he took the hint and buggered off, she spent the rest of the night apologizing to me. I kept trying to tell her that I had absolutely no objection to being kissed by a beautiful woman.”
“Smart man,” Jack laughed.
“Well, apparently she still felt badly, because the next day when I came in there was a crystal vase with a single red rose in it sitting on my desk with another apology.” Ianto studied the cobblestones under their feet as they walked. “So I went to her office and said that if it would make her feel better, I’d take her out to dinner and then let her kiss me again, so that things will have been done in proper order.”
“That’s cute,” Jack told him affectionately.
“Andrew didn’t think so. He liked to imply that she was only dating me because she was trying to make him jealous.” Ianto shrugged, dislodging his arm from Jack’s. Jack slid his hand down and wove their fingers together, keeping them connected as they walked. “It made our working relationship a bit rough at times, but when it came down to it…” Ianto took a deep breath. “He was the one who was able to help me turn the conversion unit into a life support system. Lisa knew… When she was awake and lucid she told us what she needed, but he actually did the rewiring and the meshing of the medical tech and the conversion unit. When it came down to it, he put all the pettiness aside in order to keep her alive.” He stopped and turned to face Jack. “I owe him Jack. I owe him more than I can repay. It’s not his fault that we couldn’t undo the conversion. Ethan kept the human part of her alive, Andrew the mechanical.”
Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto, “And you kept her fighting, didn’t you? Kept her from giving up or going insane?”
Ianto pulled abruptly away. “Lot of good it did me.” He began walking again, his anger from before resurfacing.
Jack ran to catch up. “Hey, hey, hey.” He grabbed Ianto’s arm. “You did everything you could and then some. It’s no one’s fault that it wasn’t enough. The Cybermen were the ones who hurt her and were responsible for her death.” He had to hope that after all this time, after all the trust they’d worked so hard to build after Lisa’s death, that Ianto wasn’t still hating him for the fact that he’d been responsible for her ultimate destruction. For the end of his hope.
Ianto sighed; his shoulders slumped. “I know. I’m sorry.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m not angry at you, I just…” He took another deep breath. “We need to find him, Jack. I owe him.”
Jack wrapped his arm around Ianto’s shoulder, kissing a cold cheek. “We’ll do everything we can.”