A Shattered Mirror Still Reflects - Part 1
Found it! And it only took me, what, a couple of months? *rolls eyes* Do I need to get organised or what? I'm the nightmare that has Ianto waking up screaming.
Anyway, this needs some explanation for the poor innocents wandering into my clutches for the first time. I wrote this a long time ago, then took extracts from it and posted them when I was trying to do my Unremitting Darkness and Misery phase. Didn't work and I went back to my normal Fluffhound personna so I never posted the final part. Anyway, lots of nice people sort of wanted the entire thing, so I said I'd post it. For those of you who remember the extracts posted, this is an angst-fest with upbeat overtones, just to warn you. I've had to split it in two 'cos it's over the 10,000 word limit and I've also noticed a problem in the latter part that I need to fix before posting Part 2.
So:
Title: A Shattered Mirror Still Reflects
Characters: Jack and Ianto, with the Team as side characters.
Rating: PG for implied violence and suicidal thoughts.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and to RTD.
Spoilers: General for series 1.
Summary: An alternate take to the aftermath of the episode 'Cyberwoman'.
Ianto waited until he was certain that Jack would be away for a couple of hours before he had the temerity to enter the man’s personal quarters. He knew he it was still part of his duties to pick up and clean after everyone, but the thought of tidying Jack’s space while the man stood by and watched him gave him a sick feeling inside. Until… Lisa - oh, God, would it never stop hurting to even think about her? - Ianto had never realised the immense reservoirs of rage and violence that lay beneath Jack’s smiling exterior. He knew now. He could never forget now. Every time Jack moved towards him, Ianto remembered words spoken with absolute conviction: ‘execute her or I will execute you both’. Ianto had failed to obey and the threat remained extant and implicit, hanging over Ianto’s head like that bloody sword in the story. Jack was capable of it, more than capable of it, and Ianto had no idea why he was still alive.
You know why you’re alive, twpsyn, he thought in contempt. He knows how much it hurts you to live when she’s died, how difficult it is to meet the others’ eyes, how terrifying it is to stand in the same room as the man who has the power of life and death over you. What better punishment than to make you live and go through the charade that everything is all right? He told you that you’ll stay alive until he decides otherwise. Why else would he have dragged you out of the water and brought you back?
He sighed. Self-pity had never been a flaw of his and it was utterly depressing that it had waited until now to show up. Thousands of people lost their loved ones every day and they managed to cope. His wanting to crawl under a rock and never come out again was contemptible and cowardly. But then, he had never really understood how pathetically inadequate he was until everything had gone wrong. He had fooled himself so thoroughly that it had been a genuine shock to realise that he had screwed up from beginning to end, ruining everything in the process.
The rage was still there, simmering away like some vast reservoir of lava. Intertwined with it was the hatred he felt towards Harkness. Both emotions were distant, though, and difficult to reach through the exhaustion and the fear. Sometimes Jack said or did something and Ianto felt the warmth of the hate press up against the ice that seemed to bind his heart and mind, but it never quite managed to break through and after a while it sank back down and there was only the grief and fear.
But he still had his job at the Hub and he focused on those small tasks with almost pathological zeal, even though they barely took up any time now he no longer had Lisa to care for. Jack had said something about taking him out into the field and Ianto had quailed inwardly at the smile he’d been given at that point. So warm and open and honest. A friend's smile. 'Execute her or I will execute you both.'
It would be so much easier to keep the paperwork neat if his death was an accident. So tragic, but what could anyone expect with such a screw-up in the field? And yet it would mean an end to the pain, an end to the knowledge that the woman he loved was now a partly dismembered corpse in the morgue. It would take Ianto a long time to forget the casual way Owen had started to detail his findings on Lisa’s autopsy while Ianto had been handing out the coffee. Taken completely by surprise, Ianto had dropped the tray and just stood there like an idiot until a furious Jack had thrown him out. Ianto had been scarlet with embarrassment at his lapse in control but everyone had gone out of their way to not mention it afterwards, which made him feel even worse.
He was marking time and knew it. It took all his energy to do his job and he had very little left over to rebuild what was left of himself. Waste of time and effort. Jack was looking for his replacement even now. It had been pure accident that Ianto had seen the initial email to Torchwood on a routine sweep of the system, but after that he had watched for them. And he’d found them. Encrypted, and he’d been surprised by the flicker of contempt he had felt towards Jack for thinking there was an encryption system that could hold him for long, but matter of fact in their demands. A replacement for the current post-holder as quickly as possible.
The sick feeling shook him again. He half-wanted, half-dreaded the resolution to this shadow-life he was leading. He didn’t want there to be an afterlife, didn’t want any moving on to another plane of existence. He just wanted everything to end, for the darkness and silence to fall and never lift. No more thinking, no more dreaming and definitely no more longing for something he had never had and never would have.
But for now there was his work, and his work included keeping Jack’s quarters clean. He’d watched and listened to him leave and then monitored him until he had gone out of range. As soon as he was certain that the other man was safely away and not coming back, Ianto made for his quarters.
It wasn’t as untidy as he’d expected, although the small pottery of mugs scattered around solved the mystery of where they had all gone and scotched Owen’s theory that there was a ceramic-eating alien hiding out in Torchwood. He dumped them in the kitchen and then went back to straighten out the rest of the room and change the sheets on the bed. The tasks were menial and barely merited the title of a job but when he had had Lisa to care for, they had given him a valid reason to be at the Hub at odd hours and hadn’t taxed him when he was exhausted with living a double life that was one solid lie. Now that Lisa was gone, they gave him an excuse not to think, not to rise above the grey blur his mind had become. He wasn’t even sure if he could cope with actually thinking for himself any more.
He was moving on autopilot and didn’t realise how precariously a pile of files were balanced on an old pizza box. There was an explosive avalanche of paper descending onto the floor that left him stricken. How was he going to be able to get that back together before Jack came back? He had seen what Jack thought was a sensible filing system. He had more chance of teaching Myfanwy to sing descant to Bryn Terfil than he had of getting all that paper back into the same order Jack had left it in.
Could things get any worse? He’s going to think I’ve been going through his private papers now, Ianto thought in despair. He reached down to pick the papers up, then paused in confusion when he realised that they were all photographs of him. The files, he saw, were divided into months and years. Ianto felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as a quick shuffle revealed that the photos went back over a four-year period, beginning with when he had first started in Torchwood Three, continuing through his two years at Torchwood London and then his return to Cardiff. There were even copies of the photos taken when Lisa had taken him back to meet her parents last Christmas. There were official photos, CCTV captures, candid snaps… about the only period of his recent life that wasn’t here was the two weeks he’d spent with his sister. And the time he had spent caring for Lisa, of course.
“Beth sy’n digwydd?” he whispered to himself. What possible reason could Jack have for keeping such an exhaustive photographic record of him? Had he stumbled onto Ianto’s greatest lie? If that was so, then the least of Ianto’s worries was an ‘accidental’ death in the field. A new layer of panic rose up to claw at him.
He quickly sorted the photographs back into a rough semblance of order, hoping that Jack wouldn’t have that accurate a memory of what went where. Now that he knew the key, he could sort most of the photos but a few defeated him since he couldn’t remember where and when they would have been taken. Offering up a small prayer that Jack wouldn’t either, he stuck them in at random and put them back on the desk. It was while he was disposing of the pizza box and rubbish from the waste-bin that he saw the mirror.
It hadn’t been in here the last time Ianto had tidied. He was positive he would have noticed it. A large oval, it rested against the wall next to the bed. The frame was of black wood, probably ebony, and intricately carved. Fascinated, Ianto crouched down to take a closer look. There were figures in the wood, elongated like the old Celtic designs, but with an element of desperation in their contortions. A couple of faces leapt out from the confusion, the features twisted and filled with longing, their mouths open as if gasping for air. Ianto caught sight of serpents amongst trees or vines, sharp-toothed mouths agape in what looked more like anguish than threat. At some point in the past, the mirror itself had been very thoroughly broken, but instead of replacing it, someone - Jack? - had very carefully fitted all the broken pieces together within the frame. The result was a mirror that reflected a shattered, dysfunctional universe. A world where fragmented people shuddered and skittered through a life without meaning or structure.
This is my world, Ianto thought as he reached out a shaking hand to touch the glass. No sense or harmony or beauty any more. Just chaos and ugly discord. It was strange to see it materialise in front of his eyes as well as live inside his heart. It was also oddly compelling. His absorption suddenly vanished when there was a flicker of movement in the mirror and he focused on the shattered, shimmering image of Jack Harkness standing behind him.
He straightened with a rush, saw the look of cold anger on Jack’s face and flinched back from the anticipated blow. He realised his error a couple of seconds too late when he crashed back against the desk and those damned files went flying again. He reached out a hand in a desperate attempt to stop them from falling, only to have his wrist seized. Jack had moved impossibly fast and was now standing right beside him, so close that Ianto could feel the heat from his body. He shivered, trying to pull away, then went staggering as Jack shoved him away with all his considerable strength.
"Get the hell out of here," he snarled.
“I-“ Ianto stuttered over an apology, but his throat closed at the expression on Jack’s face.
"Get out and don't come back until I tell you to!" Jack shouted.
Ianto fled, practically falling over his own feet in his eagerness to get away. A part of him was cynically amused over his attempt to escape Jack’s lethal presence when so much of him wanted to die. It looked as though some vestige of self-preservation had managed to cling to life after all. He couldn’t even make a proper job of fatalism.
“Ianto?”
Gwen’s voice managed to penetrate the fog and Ianto belatedly realised that he was pressed up against the wall of the corridor, his gaze fixed on the spot where Jack would emerge from his room. He struggled to get his breathing under control, figuring that his hammering heart would then follow suit.
"Ianto, are you all right?"
Her touch on his arm had him shying away. Don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t remind me that I’m alive, don’t bind me to life. He felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment over what she must think, seeing him cower like a beaten child. He reached for his armour, threadbare and worn, and smoothed his face back into its usual expression of quiet attention.
"Can I get you some coffee?"
A stab of some emotion crossed her face and for terrible moment, Ianto thought she was going to hug him. She must have sensed him tensing because she obviously thought better of it. Instead she bit her lip and then forced a smile. “If you ever want to talk," she began tentatively.
Ianto did recoil then. Talk? Talk about what? The weather? The state of the nation? The fact that his actions had created a situation that had doomed his girlfriend, threatened his friends, destroyed their trust and friendship and left him with a boss who was obviously torn between sacking him or terminating his employment in a much more final fashion? Oh yes, he could visualise that topic of conversation over a coffee and a Hobnob! He could feel the hysterical laughter welling up inside of him and greeted Owen’s sarcastic shout that he was dying of thirst with relief.
"If you'll excuse me-" he said as he slid around Gwen.
His need to escape redoubled when he saw Jack appear in the corridor, his face cool and remote as he stared at Ianto. Ianto immediately ducked his head and averted his gaze, acknowledging Jack’s dominance and Ianto’s awareness of his place in the pecking order. The one time he had tried to act as if everything was as it had been, Jack had slapped him down so fast he’d had whiplash, with a snarky comment about Ianto’s actions being his own responsibility. The barb had gone deep and Ianto hadn’t presumed again. He had to go past Jack to get to the kitchen and held his breath as he drew level.
"Coffee ready?" Jack asked in a neutral tone.
Ianto swallowed. "Yes, sir. S-shall I bring you a cup?"
Jack nodded. "Oh, and Ianto? You don't have to clean up after me."
But it’s all I have left, Ianto thought miserably. I’ve lost everything else: my pride, my self-belief, my friends, your respect. Will you leave me with nothing? “Yes, sir. I’ll go and get your coffee.” Until my replacement comes along and you take that away, as well. There’s no-one around to piece together my broken pieces. No-one to fit me back into the frame.
I wonder if you’ll keep a photo of my corpse?
OOOO
Jack had lived a long time. He'd seen and done a lot in that time. He'd known love and hate, friendship and loneliness, ecstasy and desolation and all the shades in between. He'd done things he was proud of and things that still had the power to make him weep or cringe in shame. He was the sum total of more experiences than he could begin to count. One thing he wasn't used to, however, was feeling helpless, so right now he was not having a good time.
Ianto Jones. Three syllables that up until a couple of weeks ago had described someone he thought he knew and understood. A young man, competent and eager to please, with a lot of potential that Jack thought he had plenty of time to explore. A young man he found extremely attractive but who seemed content to play at flirtation rather than follow through on any of the lures Jack had cast in his direction. Someone who preferred to remain in the background and do all the little jobs that seemed so trivial but were so essential.
Only he hadn't known or understood Ianto Jones at all, had he?
To say that finding he had an activated Cyberman - or Cyberwoman - inside his own base had been a shock was like saying that a supernova was a bit bright. Memories of old missions against the creatures where he had survived by the slimmest of margins had surged to the forefront, along with the memories of people who hadn't survived the way he had. Astonishment had given way to blind rage when he realised that Ianto, of all people, had been responsible for this thing being here. Ianto; the one person in his entire team that he had credited with some basic common-sense!
Ianto, whose loyalty had never been to Jack but to the abomination he had hidden in the basement.
The sense of betrayal had been absolute and Jack had realised, far too late, that he had been fooling himself all along with his teasing comments and playful innuendos. He hadn't wanted to get inside Ianto's suit. He'd wanted to get inside Ianto's heart. He'd made a thousand excuses to himself and believed every one. He'd even told himself that the collection of photos and the long minutes he had spent watching Ianto on the CCTV had simply been him gathering material for a light-hearted seduction. He hadn't been planning anything deeper and more meaningful. He hadn't been wondering what it would be like to have Ianto turn and smile, really smile rather than the polite grimace he gave most people, at Jack. He hadn't been hoping that maybe some day he would be the most important person in Ianto's young life.
Only someone was already in that position; a woman turned monster who was planning their immediate and painful demise - if they were lucky - and Ianto was still defending her and trying to argue her case to the very people she was threatening. Under more normal circumstances, Jack would have found such absolute loyalty commendable. As it was, the urge to put a bullet through the man's head was very strong.
How they had survived was something that Jack might have wondered about if it hadn't been for the strong suspicion that doing so would give him nightmares. It was enough that they had survived, albeit at the cost of two innocent people's lives. And maybe the sanity of one of his team.
And wasn't that the oddest thing of all? That he still considered Ianto to be a part of the team, when he should have either retconned the man and got rid of him or executed him for treason? What Ianto had done should have been inexcusable and unforgivable, yet Jack found himself finding excuses and forgiveness had come so quickly and swiftly that Jack had never even seen it coming before it had arrived.
To love someone that much.
To risk the whole world for the sake of a single individual.
There had been a time when he would have done that. When he would have risked everything on the fall of the dice, the turn of the card, and to hell with the possible risks. Jack Harkness, conman extraordinaire, brought to his knees by an enigmatic alien who had lived a thousand years and a young human girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and had only lived a little over two decades. Only the conman had been conned; broken and remade into something strange and then left behind as surplus to requirement by the people he had learned to love.
Maybe that was why he had forgiven Ianto so easily. Both of them had loved deeply and not, as it turned out, all that wisely. Both of them had been betrayed and abandoned by the ones they loved. And both of them had been broken and reformed into something different to what they had been. The problem was that Ianto wasn't healing. He was still bleeding to death right in front of Jack and Jack couldn't figure out just what the hell he needed to do to stop the haemorrhaging.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back, Jack could see a dozen places where he should have said or done something completely different. Why on earth had he expected Ianto to act like they were on some training exercise and listen and accept what Jack was saying to him, when Jack had been telling his something that tore at the very foundations of his world? Would Jack have listened if one of the people on the Gamestation had pulled him to one side and told him that the Doctor was a monster who was letting people get killed just so he could engineer his and Rose's own escape? People had been dying all around them and yet Jack's loyalty to the Doctor had never wavered. Why in hell's name had he expected Ianto to nod and agree and turn against the woman he had spent a year trying to keep alive? If there was any huge mystery to this mess, it was that.
And then to have demanded that Ianto go in and finish Lisa off... Jack sighed and shook his head. Harkness, your middle names are Big, Dumb and Bastard. Also Stupid, if you thought he would have been able to do that. Hell, Lisa had done her level best to kill Ianto and he had still been trying to think of ways to stop her without killing her.
"If I had that kind of loyalty," Jack whispered to himself. "If I could get him to give me that kind of loyalty..."
There was a fat chance in hell of that happening now. What part of Ianto wasn't consumed by hatred of him was equally filled with fear. Jack saw it in the other man's eyes every time Jack moved without thinking or raised his voice. He'd done his best to be as non-threatening as possible since the incident, going out of his way to keep his distance and choking back the old impulse to tease. He didn't even touch him any more, for fear of the flinches he always got.
He missed the touching. And the teasing. He missed having the old Ianto around, with his mischievous smile and tart observations. He missed the overly-done sigh he got when he begged for coffee. He especially missed the sarcastic comments that so often concealed a genuine insight or idea. He'd known, even before he'd had the disconcerting reality rubbed in his face, that Ianto was capable of so much more than he was doing. Looking back, he cursed the fact that he had never actually acted on his vague plans to get to know the younger man better and maybe make him a more integral part of the team.
Too late.
He hated those two words. They summed up far too much of his long life. At first he had thought he had lost all hope of keeping Ianto. The suicide attempt had been the last straw and a terrified Jack had used every trick in the book to make Ianto promise that he would never try and do something like that again. He knew that Ianto was fanatical about keeping his promises, so he hoped that would buy him some time to break down the barriers that had now understandably risen between them.
One thing was for damn sure. There was no way he was going to let Ianto continue as a barely acknowledged backroom boy, only good for menial or administrative tasks. He wasn't going to let all that potential go to waste and maybe having something new might help kick-start Ianto out of the fugue he seemed to have dropped into. He was going to get him out into the field and bind him so tightly to the Team and to Jack that there would never be any question of him walking away.
All he had to do was figure out a way to do that. Right now, Ianto was as skittish as hell around them, attending to their needs with a ghost-like silence that was freaking the hell out of Tosh and Gwen and even had Owen looking a little daunted. Not that Jack felt any sympathy for the doctor, after the way he had started to report on Lisa's autopsy while Ianto had been in the same room, going into unnecessary detail with a degree of relish that had Jack tearing a strip off him as soon as he had ordered a stricken Ianto out of the room. Jack couldn't keep more of a distance and still be in the same base and he was having to constantly fight the urge to grab the younger man and try and make him understand that it would get better and Jack hadn't meant the things he had said to him.
The problem with that, of course, was that he had meant them at the time and Ianto knew it. Just as Jack knew that Ianto had meant what he had yelled back. Jack no longer meant what he had said, but he really didn't know if Ianto had lost the murderous anger he'd displayed. Anything could be hidden underneath that desolate sadness and fear he was now unconsciously projecting.
Jack had grabbed the chance to leave the Hub, but his stomach had clenched when he'd come back and found Ianto clearing up in his quarters. He'd registered the younger man's presence a few seconds too late to stop himself from sliding down the ladder. Ianto had been crouched down beside the mirror Jack had liberated out of storage a couple of days before, an expression of sad wonder on his face as he ran his fingers across the crazed surface.
Jack had had the mirror since the 1940s, although he went through phases where he couldn't bear the sight of it. He'd waited until his earlier self had vanished into the timestream with the Doctor and Rose, then had gone back to his rooms. The air raid they'd used as a cover for the destruction of the Chula hospital ship had also scored a partial hit on the building he was billeted at, but he had picked through the wreckage and collected a few things he was sentimentally attached to. The mirror had been there; a gift from an earlier time that always reminded him of creamy skin and hair as black as a raven's wing. He'd carefully picked up every shard of glass he could find and taken it with him. He could have simply had a new mirror cut, but some perverse whim had made him piece it back together again.
Every time he looked into it, he felt simultaneously reassured and terrified. Reassured that he still had a reflection and hadn't faded into nothing, like the ghosts of folklore. Terrified that he was just as fragmented in reality as he was his reflection; pieces of him detaching and losing themselves as the decades passed and flowed into centuries. It had come as a kick in the stomach to see the same combination of emotions on Ianto's face as he looked at his own reflection. He was too young to have such a beaten expression on his face. Jack knew a flare of anger that he had been partially responsible for putting it there.
Then Ianto had realised he was behind him and had started to his feet in alarm, knocking over the folders that held the pictures Jack had collected of him. Ianto had gone to grab at the cascading paper and Jack had panicked, not wanting him to realise what was in those folders. He had all but thrown the younger man out of his room, realising that little bit to late that his reaction was a little over the top. He taken a few minutes to catch his breath and hide the photos away, then went to apologise. The words died when he saw the panic in Ianto's eyes when he saw him. An apology would do no good, he realised with a pang. He let the moment - and Ianto - go and exchanged a helpless look with Gwen.
This had to stop. Maybe after he'd found someone to take over Ianto's more menial duties, and he had him as a part of the Team for real, they could start mending the shattered bridges that lay between them.
OOOO
There was very little left in Ianto Jones' life. Every morning when he awoke from a nightmare-sodden, drug-induced sleep, there was a familiar aching hollow deep inside him, an emptiness that seemed to grow larger and larger with each passing day. Some small part of him that clung to sanity was quick to catalogue the symptoms and tell him that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress and that it had probably started back at Canary Wharf, but the knowledge made no difference to the thick greyness that infused every part of his world. While he had had Lisa to care for, there had been a weird kind of justification for his existence, but now he was just.. waiting.
Small rituals now dominated every waking moment. When he awoke, he showered and dressed in a clean suit. The rest of his home was falling into a chaotic disorder he dimly registered, but he knew that the Captain expected him to be presentable for work and Ianto didn't want to give him a reason to discipline him. The memory of the gun barrel pressed against his head and the rage in the Captain's voice was never far away. It was odd that while he ached for death every second of his waking day, he didn't want it to be at the hand of the Captain. He knew that it would be and it made him feel sick to know that he had brought this upon himself, but it was really no more than he deserved. After all, he was the man who had kissed his crippled, emotionally traumatised girlfriend and told her that he loved her, then gone upstairs and flirted with the Captain, enjoying the flutter in his stomach as he had done so.
He still wasn't quite sure how the relationship with Harkness had come about. He knew damn well that the Captain wasn't in love with him. Captain Harkness had a well-founded reputation for bedding anything that had a pulse and Ianto was pretty sure he was seen as nothing more than a potentially convenient source of gratification. Quite frankly, it would have been odder if he hadn't flirted with Ianto. Harkness wouldn't want to jeopardise his relationship with the actual team but Ianto was available and could easily be replaced. After all, you wouldn't have to scour the world for someone who could clean and make coffee.
When he had first started at Torchwood Three, long before his move to London and the Battle, it had been a source of amusement to him, but as time had gone on, he had found it more and more difficult to ignore the lures that had been cast out. It had never been part of his plans to fall in love with the leader of Torchwood Three but he had sensed that was starting to happen. In something of a panic, he had applied for a transfer to London and the indifferent kindness with which Jack had authorised it had told Ianto that he had been wise not to read more into the little touches and comments that Jack... no, no, no, never Jack any more! It's Captain or sir or Captain Harkness. Remember your place!.... had made.
He'd gone to London and found a place for himself there, rising swiftly through the ranks as his abilities and skills were noticed and put to good use. He was stretched in ways he had never had the opportunity to be at Cardiff, but he missed the anarchic way the Captain ran things. London was regimented and compartmentalised in a way that his librarian self could appreciate but which his quietly suppressed rebellious self found stifling and dangerously blinkered. How dangerous was proved when the single-minded pursuit of the ghost-energy had resulted in the Cybermen, and then the Daleks, being let loose on the world. And when the nightmare had finally been over, Ianto had realised he was still trapped in it when he had discovered Lisa and promised to keep her safe and restore her to health.
He was shit at keeping promises, he reflected bitterly. He'd done his best, but his best hadn't been good enough, not by a long shot. It was a measure of how empty his life had become towards the end, when Lisa had started to act so distant and unforgiving and he had become ever more frantic to find someone to help her, that the high spot of his day would be the flirting and banter between himself and Jack Harkness.
Not that the Captain had made any comments or laid a finger on him since Lisa had died. He was probably afraid that the temptation to break his would-be conquest's neck would be too great. And the strange thing was that Ianto missed the touches and the banter in some dim, semi-aware way. Harkness had been the only person to actually touch Ianto since he had come back from Canary Wharf. Ianto had learned that touching Lisa often hurt or annoyed her, so apart from the occasional kiss or the light brush of hand against hand, he kept himself under strict control when he was attending her, keeping his touches down to the bare minimum needed to tend to her needs. If he remembered lazy days off when they had barely taken their hands off one another the entire time, he was careful that she didn't see the hopeless tears that came. He had to remain strong for her and keep the hope alive.
No more hope, Ianto thought dully. No more flirtatious talk and inappropriate touching. No more talk about harassment. Treachery and execution, yes, but no harassment. The girls still walked around him like they were on eggshells, wary of saying something that might provoke an emotional outburst. He was tempted to explain to them that he was no longer capable of such things, but he realised that would make them feel even more uncomfortable. Owen, of course, was as caustic and tactless as ever and that was vaguely reassuring. But Harkness.... Seeing the wariness in the Captain's eyes and hearing nothing but brisk business-like words coming from his mouth was another pain to add to the ones nestled in his heart.
Ianto sighed and adjusted his tie. Not much longer before I don't have to worry about it any more. Today was the first day of the interviews with his replacement. He gazed into the mirror and realised with a flicker of surprise that there was something very close to a smile on his lips. But it was almost amusing. The Captain had been sending encrypted emails to Torchwood London, telling them he wanted a replacement for Ianto, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that Ianto was perfectly capable of breaking any encryption program he stumbled across. They hadn't been best pleased by his demands, since they were still trying to get their own act together after Canary Wharf, but they had agreed to send a few candidates down.
There were nine of them. Five to be interviewed today and four tomorrow. Ianto had studied their CVs and was impressed despite himself. Three were from Facilities, four from Admin, one a technician and one was a field agent withdrawn from active service. All of them had qualifications and backgrounds that made Ianto feel very much the country cousin. But then he could still remember the 'jokes' made at his expense when he had gone up in London; the mocking of his accent and pronunciation, the mock astonishment that he knew what a computer was, the artless questions about Welsh customs and the open scorn when Ianto made some comment that underlined how hopelessly provincial he was. He'd known a flicker of triumph when he had made his meteoric rise up the ranks, driven by irritation at the way they treated him, but he had also been ashamed of himself for being so petty. Not everyone had been unwelcoming. Lisa had been kind and supportive and Ianto had loved her for her generous spirit and loving nature. In her arms he had been able to temporarily forget Jack Harkness and his apparent belief that the entire population of the world (and most of that of space) existed for his own sexual gratification.
As he let himself out of the house, Ianto wondered if Harkness had included sex as part of the essential duties in the job description.
He was the first at the Hub, as always, and he started the coffee before going up to feed Myfanwy. She was restless this morning, as she had been for the past couple of weeks since... well, call it 'the incident'. Gwen had offered to take over her care and Ianto had realised that she (and probably the others) had expected him to hate Myfanwy for attacking Lisa. Which was really stupid, but told him what they thought of him. Myfanwy was about as bright as a dog and once Suzie had managed to tame her, Ianto had taught her to obey simple commands and come when he called. In order to avoid her carrying off dogs or small children if she got a little peckish, he had thought up scent-marking her food, so getting homicidal because she had reacted exactly the way he had trained her to be was so daft he was dismayed that the others thought him capable of it.
Just when I think I've worked out how useless they think I am, they go and show me I'm nowhere near, he thought. I can just imagine the jokes they'll tell at my expense after I've gone. "Oh, you want stupid? Well, I remember when Ianto-"
He caught the slide into bleak despair as his hands started to shake. Myfanwy shrilled her displeasure and butted at him, so Ianto spent a couple more minutes than usual soothing her. He hoped the Captain would give him time to train his replacement properly, so Myfanwy wouldn't get too upset. He was rather fond of her in a distant way and it looked like she would be the only one to miss him when he was gone.
He could hear the Captain yelling his name just as he'd got Myfanwy settled. Leaving her to happily tear at the sheep's carcass, he climbed back down to the Hub's ground floor. "Yes, sir?" he asked.
"I have some people coming today, Ianto," Jack said brusquely. "They're applying for a position at Cardiff. I want you to show them around and give them an idea of how things work around here. Use your job as an example and then I'll get the others to fill them in on their jobs, okay?"
Ianto suppressed the urge to sigh. He was almost tempted to tell the Captain that he knew what was happening, but common sense stopped him. If the Captain wanted his plans to be a surprise, he'd be pissed as hell if Ianto ruined them. "Very good, sir. Shall I bring you some coffee?"
Harkness nodded curtly. He never asked Ianto for coffee any more. None of them did. Or food. He made it or ordered it anyway and served it silently. Gwen and Tosh made a point of thanking him every time and Ianto desperately tried to remember how to smile in return. Owen just ignored him the way he always had and Harkness... well, the Captain just looked at him and then turned away.
He served Jack his coffee, and then went to take up station at the reception desk. The others came in and hurried past him. He realised after about ten minutes that it wouldn't be occurring to Harkness that he might need a copy of the interview schedule, so he printed out one for himself and checked to see who was the first person coming.
Jacqueline Nesmith. 27. Born in Oxford, one year experience at Torchwood London in the research department. Degrees in bioengineering, cybernetics and nanotechnology. Hobbies: ju jitsu, fencing and marathon running. Ianto looked up as the door opened and sighed inwardly as a tall, statuesque woman with honey-gold hair and deep blue eyes stepped inside. "Jacqueline Nesmith?" he asked. The Captain would be pleased.
She gave him a quick up and down before nodding. "This is Torchwood?" she asked a little incredulously.
"This is one of the entrances," Ianto corrected. "Let me show you around."
He almost felt sorry for her. She was used to Torchwood London, with its smart environment and corporate focus. She picked her way around the Hub and struggled to conceal her distaste. She thought Ianto was joking when he told her about Myfanwy and she seemed relieved that her suit skirt was too narrow to allow her to climb up the ladder. Just as well. Ianto could hear Myfanwy making the throaty growly sounds that were a warning not to come any closer. She wrinkled her nose as he took her down to the containment cells and Ianto took a petty delight in not warning her about going too close to the door of the Weevil's cell. She gave a yelp when it lunged at her and was only too happy to follow Ianto back up to the ground floor again. Ianto looked up and saw the Captain standing above them, as impassive as ever. He nodded at Jacqueline and Ianto quickly ushered her upstairs. He closed the door on the hearty welcome Jacqueline was given.
He'd barely got back to his desk before Jacqueline was storming past him. He blinked, then realised that Harkness had followed after her, looking exasperated. "Sir?"
"I don't think she appreciates us, Ianto," he said with a wry smile.
Ianto's lips shaped a silent 'oh' and he glanced down at the schedule. "There's a while before the next person is due, sir."
He realised his mistake when Harkness came to stand beside him and looked down at the schedule. When he looked up again, his face was unreadable but Ianto found himself holding his breath and throttling back the urge to back away. There was nowhere to run. There hadn't been since that night. "I-"
"Show him around when he gets here," Harkness said and then left.
Graham Saunders turned up right on time, with a suit every bit as smart as Ianto's and an easy smile and manner. Graduate of Cambridge, degrees in business economics and political science. Hobbies boxing and poker. Fluent in French, German and Russian. He didn't seem fazed by the Hub but he didn't like Myfanwy one little bit and she tried to take his head off with one carefully aimed jab. Ianto took him into the Captain's office and then left to return to his post.
After that, things fell into a kind of rhythm. People arrived; Ianto showed them around, took them into Harkness and then watched them leave. Some left much more quickly than the others, but at least three completed a full interview. He also realised, from their reactions, that the others had no idea what was going on. Tosh had even asked him, and Ianto had simply said that the Captain was interviewing. He left them all speculating what job the interviews were for, feeling more than a little weary. Was he the only one around here that was capable of putting two and two together?
The day drew to a close and the final applicant was ushered out. Patricia Ramirez, 34. Second in command of Facilities on Floor 27 of Torchwood Tower. Previous experience in the catering industry and hotel management. Myfanwy had liked her and she had taken Ianto to task over the state of the containment cells. She depressed Ianto more than all the others put together.
The other three left and Ianto went around clearing up after them. Tosh's workstation was almost neat and he was careful not to shut down anything that was obviously running. Owen had forgotten to shut down his internet connection again and Ianto sighed at the stream of porn cluttering up the computer. How many pages did he have to have open at once, for goodness sake? He shut it all down, and then took considerable pleasure in wiping all the bookmarks and cookies. Gwen's station was extremely untidy. He glanced at the work she was doing, smiled faintly and then sorted the files out; scribbling a few pointers to her on some post-its before making sure everything was shut down. She was still new to Torchwood and didn't know the enormity of the information pool she now had at her disposal.
It didn't take long to finish the cleaning and sort out things for the next day. He climbed up to check on Myfanwy but she was still happily playing with the carcass and wouldn't need any proper feeding for another couple of days. She had been unsettled by all the strange faces so he stayed and sang to her softly, waiting until her eyes had fully lidded and she was crooning along, almost as if she was singing as well. Smiling at his fancy, Ianto climbed back down to find Harkness at the bottom, arms folded and eyes closed as he waited.
"Sir?" Ianto hesitated. Had the Captain been listening? Why would he bother?
"My office," Harkness said.
Swallowing hard, Ianto followed after him obediently, wondering which particular axe was going to fall. Harkness marched up to his desk, then whirled and leaned back against it, arms folded defensively across his chest.
"You know about the interviews," he said flatly. Ianto nodded. "The emails I sent were encrypted."
"Yes, sir."
Something gleamed in the Captain's eyes and he stood upright. Ianto jerked back instinctively, feeling his throat close up, but Harkness caught himself in time and relaxed back again.
"Clever little so-and-so, aren't you?" he said in a soft as butter voice.
Ianto swallowed again but said nothing. He couldn't think of anything he could say that wouldn't get him into even more trouble. After a while, Harkness shrugged and turned away, dismissing him.
"You'd better leave. I'm assuming that you know there will be more interviewees here tomorrow?"
Ianto contented himself with a nod and fled. He hadn't stopped shaking by the time he got back to his house. For a moment he paused in the kitchen, vaguely trying to remember when he ate last. The memory eluded him but the thought of food made him feel ill. He contented himself with a shower before taking some of the tablets Owen didn't realise he had filched and crawling into bed. His last conscious thought before the nightmare-tainted darkness claimed him was to wonder if his going-away present would be a bullet in the head.
OOOO
Jack's initial enthusiasm for the task of interviewing replacements for Ianto didn't last long. He'd never really gone in for the formal interview scenario, preferring a more casual approach, generally allowing fate or circumstance to bring people to his attention. It was an attitude that had always worked pretty well in the past. It also meant he didn't waste his time with people who had completely the wrong attitude for the job he wanted them to do.
Nesmith set the tone for the rest of the day. She had been contemptuous of the Hub and failed to conceal it. She also seemed to think that the job she had come to interview for wasn't the job she should be doing and she didn't take well to Jack making it plain that, yes, that was what he expected of her. She stormed off in a huff and Jack trailed after her, watching with resigned amusement as she slammed out of the Tourist Office, leaving a bewildered Ianto in her wake.
"I don't think she appreciates us, Ianto," he said with a wry smile.
Ianto's lips shaped a silent 'oh' and he glanced down at the schedule. "There's a while before the next person is due, sir."
Blinking in surprise, Jack stepped forward and saw that Ianto had printed out the interview schedule that Jack had put together. That meant he had to know exactly what Jack was doing, even though Jack had encrypted everything. Jack kept the elation off his face with an effort as he looked up, but the look of panic on Ianto's face warned him against making any kind of smart remark.
"Show him around when he gets here," he said and then left.
He checked his computer when he got back to his office but there was no sign of any tampering. Ianto had ghosted in and then out again without leaving some much as a digital scuff mark. Damn, I've got to get him working at his full capacity! Jack thought as he got ready for the next interviewee. Having someone of this calibre cleaning up after them was like having Albert Einstein sorting out the petty cash.
The rest of the applicants came and went, but none of them really made him sit up and take notice apart from the last one. Patricia Ramirez had all of the support skills but lacked the archivist qualifications and told him bluntly that she had only come because she had been told to. She'd also lectured him mildly about the workload the current postholder seemed to be coping with and it was on the tip of Jack's tongue to tell her that Ianto was now doing the equivalent of coasting along, the work barely taxing him and leaving him with far too much time to brood. Instead he had agreed meekly that maybe the job description needed tweaking and they parted more amicably than he had with any of the others.
Once she had left, Jack sat and wrote up the few notes he had taken during the interview. To be honest, the only one he would even consider was Patricia and she would only be able to do half of what Ianto did with such effortless ease that Jack was only now beginning to realise just how essential the man was to the smooth running of Torchwood Three. The others had all gone when he came out of his office and he expected to see Ianto moving around and clearing up, but there was no sign of the young Welshman. Jack did a quick circuit of the Hub and finally tracked him down to Myfanwy's lair.
To Jack's delight, he was singing. He knew that Ianto had got into the habit of doing that to settle the pterodactyl, but Ianto was extremely shy of singing in front of people and if he realised Jack was around he invariably shut up. There had been a time, now seemingly impossibly far in the past, when Ianto had come out with the Team and if sufficiently relaxed (or tipsy) could be persuaded to do a little karaoke. He'd won them their microwave, now sadly deceased. He'd stopped coming after a while, and while Jack had always meant to persuade him to start again, he'd never got around to it and then Lisa had run amok.
Jack leaned back against the wall, folded his arms and just listened, letting the soft voice wash over him. Myfanwy wasn't the only one who found it soothing and he nearly got caught when Ianto eventually finished and climbed back down. He jumped a little and the usual tense, unsettled expression replaced the softer expression that had been there before he had seen Jack.
"Sir?"
"My office," Jack said, deciding against trying anything where they might agitate Myfanwy again.
Ianto followed after him obediently, although the expression on his face very obviously indicated that he expected some kind of doom to be waiting him in Jack's office. Jack leaned back against his desk, arms folded.
"You know about the interviews," he said in as neutral a voice as he could manage. Ianto nodded. "The emails I sent were encrypted."
"Yes, sir."
Jack felt a surge of excitement and shifted without thinking. Ianto jerked back, an expression of panic on his face. Jack caught himself and made a point of relaxing back against the desk.
"Clever little so-and-so, aren't you?" he said in satisfaction.
He realised it was the wrong thing to say when Ianto immediately looked trapped. Jack tried to think of a way to tell Ianto that he was actually pleased that Ianto had caught him out, but he couldn't think of one that wouldn't tip Ianto off that Jack was plotting to make Ianto's life that little bit more interesting and fulfilling. In his current state of mind, Ianto was likely to put the worst possible spin on such an idea. In the end he decided to leave it for a little longer, until he had a replacement and could give Ianto a concrete gameplan rather than a vague proposal.
"You'd better leave. I'm assuming that you know there will be more interviewees here tomorrow?" Ianto hesitated and then nodded, leaving with alacrity when Jack turned away in dismissal.
Left alone, Jack sighed and wondered just how his life had managed to get this complicated so quickly.
OOOO
Second part is here
Anyway, this needs some explanation for the poor innocents wandering into my clutches for the first time. I wrote this a long time ago, then took extracts from it and posted them when I was trying to do my Unremitting Darkness and Misery phase. Didn't work and I went back to my normal Fluffhound personna so I never posted the final part. Anyway, lots of nice people sort of wanted the entire thing, so I said I'd post it. For those of you who remember the extracts posted, this is an angst-fest with upbeat overtones, just to warn you. I've had to split it in two 'cos it's over the 10,000 word limit and I've also noticed a problem in the latter part that I need to fix before posting Part 2.
So:
Title: A Shattered Mirror Still Reflects
Characters: Jack and Ianto, with the Team as side characters.
Rating: PG for implied violence and suicidal thoughts.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and to RTD.
Spoilers: General for series 1.
Summary: An alternate take to the aftermath of the episode 'Cyberwoman'.
Ianto waited until he was certain that Jack would be away for a couple of hours before he had the temerity to enter the man’s personal quarters. He knew he it was still part of his duties to pick up and clean after everyone, but the thought of tidying Jack’s space while the man stood by and watched him gave him a sick feeling inside. Until… Lisa - oh, God, would it never stop hurting to even think about her? - Ianto had never realised the immense reservoirs of rage and violence that lay beneath Jack’s smiling exterior. He knew now. He could never forget now. Every time Jack moved towards him, Ianto remembered words spoken with absolute conviction: ‘execute her or I will execute you both’. Ianto had failed to obey and the threat remained extant and implicit, hanging over Ianto’s head like that bloody sword in the story. Jack was capable of it, more than capable of it, and Ianto had no idea why he was still alive.
You know why you’re alive, twpsyn, he thought in contempt. He knows how much it hurts you to live when she’s died, how difficult it is to meet the others’ eyes, how terrifying it is to stand in the same room as the man who has the power of life and death over you. What better punishment than to make you live and go through the charade that everything is all right? He told you that you’ll stay alive until he decides otherwise. Why else would he have dragged you out of the water and brought you back?
He sighed. Self-pity had never been a flaw of his and it was utterly depressing that it had waited until now to show up. Thousands of people lost their loved ones every day and they managed to cope. His wanting to crawl under a rock and never come out again was contemptible and cowardly. But then, he had never really understood how pathetically inadequate he was until everything had gone wrong. He had fooled himself so thoroughly that it had been a genuine shock to realise that he had screwed up from beginning to end, ruining everything in the process.
The rage was still there, simmering away like some vast reservoir of lava. Intertwined with it was the hatred he felt towards Harkness. Both emotions were distant, though, and difficult to reach through the exhaustion and the fear. Sometimes Jack said or did something and Ianto felt the warmth of the hate press up against the ice that seemed to bind his heart and mind, but it never quite managed to break through and after a while it sank back down and there was only the grief and fear.
But he still had his job at the Hub and he focused on those small tasks with almost pathological zeal, even though they barely took up any time now he no longer had Lisa to care for. Jack had said something about taking him out into the field and Ianto had quailed inwardly at the smile he’d been given at that point. So warm and open and honest. A friend's smile. 'Execute her or I will execute you both.'
It would be so much easier to keep the paperwork neat if his death was an accident. So tragic, but what could anyone expect with such a screw-up in the field? And yet it would mean an end to the pain, an end to the knowledge that the woman he loved was now a partly dismembered corpse in the morgue. It would take Ianto a long time to forget the casual way Owen had started to detail his findings on Lisa’s autopsy while Ianto had been handing out the coffee. Taken completely by surprise, Ianto had dropped the tray and just stood there like an idiot until a furious Jack had thrown him out. Ianto had been scarlet with embarrassment at his lapse in control but everyone had gone out of their way to not mention it afterwards, which made him feel even worse.
He was marking time and knew it. It took all his energy to do his job and he had very little left over to rebuild what was left of himself. Waste of time and effort. Jack was looking for his replacement even now. It had been pure accident that Ianto had seen the initial email to Torchwood on a routine sweep of the system, but after that he had watched for them. And he’d found them. Encrypted, and he’d been surprised by the flicker of contempt he had felt towards Jack for thinking there was an encryption system that could hold him for long, but matter of fact in their demands. A replacement for the current post-holder as quickly as possible.
The sick feeling shook him again. He half-wanted, half-dreaded the resolution to this shadow-life he was leading. He didn’t want there to be an afterlife, didn’t want any moving on to another plane of existence. He just wanted everything to end, for the darkness and silence to fall and never lift. No more thinking, no more dreaming and definitely no more longing for something he had never had and never would have.
But for now there was his work, and his work included keeping Jack’s quarters clean. He’d watched and listened to him leave and then monitored him until he had gone out of range. As soon as he was certain that the other man was safely away and not coming back, Ianto made for his quarters.
It wasn’t as untidy as he’d expected, although the small pottery of mugs scattered around solved the mystery of where they had all gone and scotched Owen’s theory that there was a ceramic-eating alien hiding out in Torchwood. He dumped them in the kitchen and then went back to straighten out the rest of the room and change the sheets on the bed. The tasks were menial and barely merited the title of a job but when he had had Lisa to care for, they had given him a valid reason to be at the Hub at odd hours and hadn’t taxed him when he was exhausted with living a double life that was one solid lie. Now that Lisa was gone, they gave him an excuse not to think, not to rise above the grey blur his mind had become. He wasn’t even sure if he could cope with actually thinking for himself any more.
He was moving on autopilot and didn’t realise how precariously a pile of files were balanced on an old pizza box. There was an explosive avalanche of paper descending onto the floor that left him stricken. How was he going to be able to get that back together before Jack came back? He had seen what Jack thought was a sensible filing system. He had more chance of teaching Myfanwy to sing descant to Bryn Terfil than he had of getting all that paper back into the same order Jack had left it in.
Could things get any worse? He’s going to think I’ve been going through his private papers now, Ianto thought in despair. He reached down to pick the papers up, then paused in confusion when he realised that they were all photographs of him. The files, he saw, were divided into months and years. Ianto felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as a quick shuffle revealed that the photos went back over a four-year period, beginning with when he had first started in Torchwood Three, continuing through his two years at Torchwood London and then his return to Cardiff. There were even copies of the photos taken when Lisa had taken him back to meet her parents last Christmas. There were official photos, CCTV captures, candid snaps… about the only period of his recent life that wasn’t here was the two weeks he’d spent with his sister. And the time he had spent caring for Lisa, of course.
“Beth sy’n digwydd?” he whispered to himself. What possible reason could Jack have for keeping such an exhaustive photographic record of him? Had he stumbled onto Ianto’s greatest lie? If that was so, then the least of Ianto’s worries was an ‘accidental’ death in the field. A new layer of panic rose up to claw at him.
He quickly sorted the photographs back into a rough semblance of order, hoping that Jack wouldn’t have that accurate a memory of what went where. Now that he knew the key, he could sort most of the photos but a few defeated him since he couldn’t remember where and when they would have been taken. Offering up a small prayer that Jack wouldn’t either, he stuck them in at random and put them back on the desk. It was while he was disposing of the pizza box and rubbish from the waste-bin that he saw the mirror.
It hadn’t been in here the last time Ianto had tidied. He was positive he would have noticed it. A large oval, it rested against the wall next to the bed. The frame was of black wood, probably ebony, and intricately carved. Fascinated, Ianto crouched down to take a closer look. There were figures in the wood, elongated like the old Celtic designs, but with an element of desperation in their contortions. A couple of faces leapt out from the confusion, the features twisted and filled with longing, their mouths open as if gasping for air. Ianto caught sight of serpents amongst trees or vines, sharp-toothed mouths agape in what looked more like anguish than threat. At some point in the past, the mirror itself had been very thoroughly broken, but instead of replacing it, someone - Jack? - had very carefully fitted all the broken pieces together within the frame. The result was a mirror that reflected a shattered, dysfunctional universe. A world where fragmented people shuddered and skittered through a life without meaning or structure.
This is my world, Ianto thought as he reached out a shaking hand to touch the glass. No sense or harmony or beauty any more. Just chaos and ugly discord. It was strange to see it materialise in front of his eyes as well as live inside his heart. It was also oddly compelling. His absorption suddenly vanished when there was a flicker of movement in the mirror and he focused on the shattered, shimmering image of Jack Harkness standing behind him.
He straightened with a rush, saw the look of cold anger on Jack’s face and flinched back from the anticipated blow. He realised his error a couple of seconds too late when he crashed back against the desk and those damned files went flying again. He reached out a hand in a desperate attempt to stop them from falling, only to have his wrist seized. Jack had moved impossibly fast and was now standing right beside him, so close that Ianto could feel the heat from his body. He shivered, trying to pull away, then went staggering as Jack shoved him away with all his considerable strength.
"Get the hell out of here," he snarled.
“I-“ Ianto stuttered over an apology, but his throat closed at the expression on Jack’s face.
"Get out and don't come back until I tell you to!" Jack shouted.
Ianto fled, practically falling over his own feet in his eagerness to get away. A part of him was cynically amused over his attempt to escape Jack’s lethal presence when so much of him wanted to die. It looked as though some vestige of self-preservation had managed to cling to life after all. He couldn’t even make a proper job of fatalism.
“Ianto?”
Gwen’s voice managed to penetrate the fog and Ianto belatedly realised that he was pressed up against the wall of the corridor, his gaze fixed on the spot where Jack would emerge from his room. He struggled to get his breathing under control, figuring that his hammering heart would then follow suit.
"Ianto, are you all right?"
Her touch on his arm had him shying away. Don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t remind me that I’m alive, don’t bind me to life. He felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment over what she must think, seeing him cower like a beaten child. He reached for his armour, threadbare and worn, and smoothed his face back into its usual expression of quiet attention.
"Can I get you some coffee?"
A stab of some emotion crossed her face and for terrible moment, Ianto thought she was going to hug him. She must have sensed him tensing because she obviously thought better of it. Instead she bit her lip and then forced a smile. “If you ever want to talk," she began tentatively.
Ianto did recoil then. Talk? Talk about what? The weather? The state of the nation? The fact that his actions had created a situation that had doomed his girlfriend, threatened his friends, destroyed their trust and friendship and left him with a boss who was obviously torn between sacking him or terminating his employment in a much more final fashion? Oh yes, he could visualise that topic of conversation over a coffee and a Hobnob! He could feel the hysterical laughter welling up inside of him and greeted Owen’s sarcastic shout that he was dying of thirst with relief.
"If you'll excuse me-" he said as he slid around Gwen.
His need to escape redoubled when he saw Jack appear in the corridor, his face cool and remote as he stared at Ianto. Ianto immediately ducked his head and averted his gaze, acknowledging Jack’s dominance and Ianto’s awareness of his place in the pecking order. The one time he had tried to act as if everything was as it had been, Jack had slapped him down so fast he’d had whiplash, with a snarky comment about Ianto’s actions being his own responsibility. The barb had gone deep and Ianto hadn’t presumed again. He had to go past Jack to get to the kitchen and held his breath as he drew level.
"Coffee ready?" Jack asked in a neutral tone.
Ianto swallowed. "Yes, sir. S-shall I bring you a cup?"
Jack nodded. "Oh, and Ianto? You don't have to clean up after me."
But it’s all I have left, Ianto thought miserably. I’ve lost everything else: my pride, my self-belief, my friends, your respect. Will you leave me with nothing? “Yes, sir. I’ll go and get your coffee.” Until my replacement comes along and you take that away, as well. There’s no-one around to piece together my broken pieces. No-one to fit me back into the frame.
I wonder if you’ll keep a photo of my corpse?
OOOO
Jack had lived a long time. He'd seen and done a lot in that time. He'd known love and hate, friendship and loneliness, ecstasy and desolation and all the shades in between. He'd done things he was proud of and things that still had the power to make him weep or cringe in shame. He was the sum total of more experiences than he could begin to count. One thing he wasn't used to, however, was feeling helpless, so right now he was not having a good time.
Ianto Jones. Three syllables that up until a couple of weeks ago had described someone he thought he knew and understood. A young man, competent and eager to please, with a lot of potential that Jack thought he had plenty of time to explore. A young man he found extremely attractive but who seemed content to play at flirtation rather than follow through on any of the lures Jack had cast in his direction. Someone who preferred to remain in the background and do all the little jobs that seemed so trivial but were so essential.
Only he hadn't known or understood Ianto Jones at all, had he?
To say that finding he had an activated Cyberman - or Cyberwoman - inside his own base had been a shock was like saying that a supernova was a bit bright. Memories of old missions against the creatures where he had survived by the slimmest of margins had surged to the forefront, along with the memories of people who hadn't survived the way he had. Astonishment had given way to blind rage when he realised that Ianto, of all people, had been responsible for this thing being here. Ianto; the one person in his entire team that he had credited with some basic common-sense!
Ianto, whose loyalty had never been to Jack but to the abomination he had hidden in the basement.
The sense of betrayal had been absolute and Jack had realised, far too late, that he had been fooling himself all along with his teasing comments and playful innuendos. He hadn't wanted to get inside Ianto's suit. He'd wanted to get inside Ianto's heart. He'd made a thousand excuses to himself and believed every one. He'd even told himself that the collection of photos and the long minutes he had spent watching Ianto on the CCTV had simply been him gathering material for a light-hearted seduction. He hadn't been planning anything deeper and more meaningful. He hadn't been wondering what it would be like to have Ianto turn and smile, really smile rather than the polite grimace he gave most people, at Jack. He hadn't been hoping that maybe some day he would be the most important person in Ianto's young life.
Only someone was already in that position; a woman turned monster who was planning their immediate and painful demise - if they were lucky - and Ianto was still defending her and trying to argue her case to the very people she was threatening. Under more normal circumstances, Jack would have found such absolute loyalty commendable. As it was, the urge to put a bullet through the man's head was very strong.
How they had survived was something that Jack might have wondered about if it hadn't been for the strong suspicion that doing so would give him nightmares. It was enough that they had survived, albeit at the cost of two innocent people's lives. And maybe the sanity of one of his team.
And wasn't that the oddest thing of all? That he still considered Ianto to be a part of the team, when he should have either retconned the man and got rid of him or executed him for treason? What Ianto had done should have been inexcusable and unforgivable, yet Jack found himself finding excuses and forgiveness had come so quickly and swiftly that Jack had never even seen it coming before it had arrived.
To love someone that much.
To risk the whole world for the sake of a single individual.
There had been a time when he would have done that. When he would have risked everything on the fall of the dice, the turn of the card, and to hell with the possible risks. Jack Harkness, conman extraordinaire, brought to his knees by an enigmatic alien who had lived a thousand years and a young human girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and had only lived a little over two decades. Only the conman had been conned; broken and remade into something strange and then left behind as surplus to requirement by the people he had learned to love.
Maybe that was why he had forgiven Ianto so easily. Both of them had loved deeply and not, as it turned out, all that wisely. Both of them had been betrayed and abandoned by the ones they loved. And both of them had been broken and reformed into something different to what they had been. The problem was that Ianto wasn't healing. He was still bleeding to death right in front of Jack and Jack couldn't figure out just what the hell he needed to do to stop the haemorrhaging.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back, Jack could see a dozen places where he should have said or done something completely different. Why on earth had he expected Ianto to act like they were on some training exercise and listen and accept what Jack was saying to him, when Jack had been telling his something that tore at the very foundations of his world? Would Jack have listened if one of the people on the Gamestation had pulled him to one side and told him that the Doctor was a monster who was letting people get killed just so he could engineer his and Rose's own escape? People had been dying all around them and yet Jack's loyalty to the Doctor had never wavered. Why in hell's name had he expected Ianto to nod and agree and turn against the woman he had spent a year trying to keep alive? If there was any huge mystery to this mess, it was that.
And then to have demanded that Ianto go in and finish Lisa off... Jack sighed and shook his head. Harkness, your middle names are Big, Dumb and Bastard. Also Stupid, if you thought he would have been able to do that. Hell, Lisa had done her level best to kill Ianto and he had still been trying to think of ways to stop her without killing her.
"If I had that kind of loyalty," Jack whispered to himself. "If I could get him to give me that kind of loyalty..."
There was a fat chance in hell of that happening now. What part of Ianto wasn't consumed by hatred of him was equally filled with fear. Jack saw it in the other man's eyes every time Jack moved without thinking or raised his voice. He'd done his best to be as non-threatening as possible since the incident, going out of his way to keep his distance and choking back the old impulse to tease. He didn't even touch him any more, for fear of the flinches he always got.
He missed the touching. And the teasing. He missed having the old Ianto around, with his mischievous smile and tart observations. He missed the overly-done sigh he got when he begged for coffee. He especially missed the sarcastic comments that so often concealed a genuine insight or idea. He'd known, even before he'd had the disconcerting reality rubbed in his face, that Ianto was capable of so much more than he was doing. Looking back, he cursed the fact that he had never actually acted on his vague plans to get to know the younger man better and maybe make him a more integral part of the team.
Too late.
He hated those two words. They summed up far too much of his long life. At first he had thought he had lost all hope of keeping Ianto. The suicide attempt had been the last straw and a terrified Jack had used every trick in the book to make Ianto promise that he would never try and do something like that again. He knew that Ianto was fanatical about keeping his promises, so he hoped that would buy him some time to break down the barriers that had now understandably risen between them.
One thing was for damn sure. There was no way he was going to let Ianto continue as a barely acknowledged backroom boy, only good for menial or administrative tasks. He wasn't going to let all that potential go to waste and maybe having something new might help kick-start Ianto out of the fugue he seemed to have dropped into. He was going to get him out into the field and bind him so tightly to the Team and to Jack that there would never be any question of him walking away.
All he had to do was figure out a way to do that. Right now, Ianto was as skittish as hell around them, attending to their needs with a ghost-like silence that was freaking the hell out of Tosh and Gwen and even had Owen looking a little daunted. Not that Jack felt any sympathy for the doctor, after the way he had started to report on Lisa's autopsy while Ianto had been in the same room, going into unnecessary detail with a degree of relish that had Jack tearing a strip off him as soon as he had ordered a stricken Ianto out of the room. Jack couldn't keep more of a distance and still be in the same base and he was having to constantly fight the urge to grab the younger man and try and make him understand that it would get better and Jack hadn't meant the things he had said to him.
The problem with that, of course, was that he had meant them at the time and Ianto knew it. Just as Jack knew that Ianto had meant what he had yelled back. Jack no longer meant what he had said, but he really didn't know if Ianto had lost the murderous anger he'd displayed. Anything could be hidden underneath that desolate sadness and fear he was now unconsciously projecting.
Jack had grabbed the chance to leave the Hub, but his stomach had clenched when he'd come back and found Ianto clearing up in his quarters. He'd registered the younger man's presence a few seconds too late to stop himself from sliding down the ladder. Ianto had been crouched down beside the mirror Jack had liberated out of storage a couple of days before, an expression of sad wonder on his face as he ran his fingers across the crazed surface.
Jack had had the mirror since the 1940s, although he went through phases where he couldn't bear the sight of it. He'd waited until his earlier self had vanished into the timestream with the Doctor and Rose, then had gone back to his rooms. The air raid they'd used as a cover for the destruction of the Chula hospital ship had also scored a partial hit on the building he was billeted at, but he had picked through the wreckage and collected a few things he was sentimentally attached to. The mirror had been there; a gift from an earlier time that always reminded him of creamy skin and hair as black as a raven's wing. He'd carefully picked up every shard of glass he could find and taken it with him. He could have simply had a new mirror cut, but some perverse whim had made him piece it back together again.
Every time he looked into it, he felt simultaneously reassured and terrified. Reassured that he still had a reflection and hadn't faded into nothing, like the ghosts of folklore. Terrified that he was just as fragmented in reality as he was his reflection; pieces of him detaching and losing themselves as the decades passed and flowed into centuries. It had come as a kick in the stomach to see the same combination of emotions on Ianto's face as he looked at his own reflection. He was too young to have such a beaten expression on his face. Jack knew a flare of anger that he had been partially responsible for putting it there.
Then Ianto had realised he was behind him and had started to his feet in alarm, knocking over the folders that held the pictures Jack had collected of him. Ianto had gone to grab at the cascading paper and Jack had panicked, not wanting him to realise what was in those folders. He had all but thrown the younger man out of his room, realising that little bit to late that his reaction was a little over the top. He taken a few minutes to catch his breath and hide the photos away, then went to apologise. The words died when he saw the panic in Ianto's eyes when he saw him. An apology would do no good, he realised with a pang. He let the moment - and Ianto - go and exchanged a helpless look with Gwen.
This had to stop. Maybe after he'd found someone to take over Ianto's more menial duties, and he had him as a part of the Team for real, they could start mending the shattered bridges that lay between them.
OOOO
There was very little left in Ianto Jones' life. Every morning when he awoke from a nightmare-sodden, drug-induced sleep, there was a familiar aching hollow deep inside him, an emptiness that seemed to grow larger and larger with each passing day. Some small part of him that clung to sanity was quick to catalogue the symptoms and tell him that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress and that it had probably started back at Canary Wharf, but the knowledge made no difference to the thick greyness that infused every part of his world. While he had had Lisa to care for, there had been a weird kind of justification for his existence, but now he was just.. waiting.
Small rituals now dominated every waking moment. When he awoke, he showered and dressed in a clean suit. The rest of his home was falling into a chaotic disorder he dimly registered, but he knew that the Captain expected him to be presentable for work and Ianto didn't want to give him a reason to discipline him. The memory of the gun barrel pressed against his head and the rage in the Captain's voice was never far away. It was odd that while he ached for death every second of his waking day, he didn't want it to be at the hand of the Captain. He knew that it would be and it made him feel sick to know that he had brought this upon himself, but it was really no more than he deserved. After all, he was the man who had kissed his crippled, emotionally traumatised girlfriend and told her that he loved her, then gone upstairs and flirted with the Captain, enjoying the flutter in his stomach as he had done so.
He still wasn't quite sure how the relationship with Harkness had come about. He knew damn well that the Captain wasn't in love with him. Captain Harkness had a well-founded reputation for bedding anything that had a pulse and Ianto was pretty sure he was seen as nothing more than a potentially convenient source of gratification. Quite frankly, it would have been odder if he hadn't flirted with Ianto. Harkness wouldn't want to jeopardise his relationship with the actual team but Ianto was available and could easily be replaced. After all, you wouldn't have to scour the world for someone who could clean and make coffee.
When he had first started at Torchwood Three, long before his move to London and the Battle, it had been a source of amusement to him, but as time had gone on, he had found it more and more difficult to ignore the lures that had been cast out. It had never been part of his plans to fall in love with the leader of Torchwood Three but he had sensed that was starting to happen. In something of a panic, he had applied for a transfer to London and the indifferent kindness with which Jack had authorised it had told Ianto that he had been wise not to read more into the little touches and comments that Jack... no, no, no, never Jack any more! It's Captain or sir or Captain Harkness. Remember your place!.... had made.
He'd gone to London and found a place for himself there, rising swiftly through the ranks as his abilities and skills were noticed and put to good use. He was stretched in ways he had never had the opportunity to be at Cardiff, but he missed the anarchic way the Captain ran things. London was regimented and compartmentalised in a way that his librarian self could appreciate but which his quietly suppressed rebellious self found stifling and dangerously blinkered. How dangerous was proved when the single-minded pursuit of the ghost-energy had resulted in the Cybermen, and then the Daleks, being let loose on the world. And when the nightmare had finally been over, Ianto had realised he was still trapped in it when he had discovered Lisa and promised to keep her safe and restore her to health.
He was shit at keeping promises, he reflected bitterly. He'd done his best, but his best hadn't been good enough, not by a long shot. It was a measure of how empty his life had become towards the end, when Lisa had started to act so distant and unforgiving and he had become ever more frantic to find someone to help her, that the high spot of his day would be the flirting and banter between himself and Jack Harkness.
Not that the Captain had made any comments or laid a finger on him since Lisa had died. He was probably afraid that the temptation to break his would-be conquest's neck would be too great. And the strange thing was that Ianto missed the touches and the banter in some dim, semi-aware way. Harkness had been the only person to actually touch Ianto since he had come back from Canary Wharf. Ianto had learned that touching Lisa often hurt or annoyed her, so apart from the occasional kiss or the light brush of hand against hand, he kept himself under strict control when he was attending her, keeping his touches down to the bare minimum needed to tend to her needs. If he remembered lazy days off when they had barely taken their hands off one another the entire time, he was careful that she didn't see the hopeless tears that came. He had to remain strong for her and keep the hope alive.
No more hope, Ianto thought dully. No more flirtatious talk and inappropriate touching. No more talk about harassment. Treachery and execution, yes, but no harassment. The girls still walked around him like they were on eggshells, wary of saying something that might provoke an emotional outburst. He was tempted to explain to them that he was no longer capable of such things, but he realised that would make them feel even more uncomfortable. Owen, of course, was as caustic and tactless as ever and that was vaguely reassuring. But Harkness.... Seeing the wariness in the Captain's eyes and hearing nothing but brisk business-like words coming from his mouth was another pain to add to the ones nestled in his heart.
Ianto sighed and adjusted his tie. Not much longer before I don't have to worry about it any more. Today was the first day of the interviews with his replacement. He gazed into the mirror and realised with a flicker of surprise that there was something very close to a smile on his lips. But it was almost amusing. The Captain had been sending encrypted emails to Torchwood London, telling them he wanted a replacement for Ianto, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that Ianto was perfectly capable of breaking any encryption program he stumbled across. They hadn't been best pleased by his demands, since they were still trying to get their own act together after Canary Wharf, but they had agreed to send a few candidates down.
There were nine of them. Five to be interviewed today and four tomorrow. Ianto had studied their CVs and was impressed despite himself. Three were from Facilities, four from Admin, one a technician and one was a field agent withdrawn from active service. All of them had qualifications and backgrounds that made Ianto feel very much the country cousin. But then he could still remember the 'jokes' made at his expense when he had gone up in London; the mocking of his accent and pronunciation, the mock astonishment that he knew what a computer was, the artless questions about Welsh customs and the open scorn when Ianto made some comment that underlined how hopelessly provincial he was. He'd known a flicker of triumph when he had made his meteoric rise up the ranks, driven by irritation at the way they treated him, but he had also been ashamed of himself for being so petty. Not everyone had been unwelcoming. Lisa had been kind and supportive and Ianto had loved her for her generous spirit and loving nature. In her arms he had been able to temporarily forget Jack Harkness and his apparent belief that the entire population of the world (and most of that of space) existed for his own sexual gratification.
As he let himself out of the house, Ianto wondered if Harkness had included sex as part of the essential duties in the job description.
He was the first at the Hub, as always, and he started the coffee before going up to feed Myfanwy. She was restless this morning, as she had been for the past couple of weeks since... well, call it 'the incident'. Gwen had offered to take over her care and Ianto had realised that she (and probably the others) had expected him to hate Myfanwy for attacking Lisa. Which was really stupid, but told him what they thought of him. Myfanwy was about as bright as a dog and once Suzie had managed to tame her, Ianto had taught her to obey simple commands and come when he called. In order to avoid her carrying off dogs or small children if she got a little peckish, he had thought up scent-marking her food, so getting homicidal because she had reacted exactly the way he had trained her to be was so daft he was dismayed that the others thought him capable of it.
Just when I think I've worked out how useless they think I am, they go and show me I'm nowhere near, he thought. I can just imagine the jokes they'll tell at my expense after I've gone. "Oh, you want stupid? Well, I remember when Ianto-"
He caught the slide into bleak despair as his hands started to shake. Myfanwy shrilled her displeasure and butted at him, so Ianto spent a couple more minutes than usual soothing her. He hoped the Captain would give him time to train his replacement properly, so Myfanwy wouldn't get too upset. He was rather fond of her in a distant way and it looked like she would be the only one to miss him when he was gone.
He could hear the Captain yelling his name just as he'd got Myfanwy settled. Leaving her to happily tear at the sheep's carcass, he climbed back down to the Hub's ground floor. "Yes, sir?" he asked.
"I have some people coming today, Ianto," Jack said brusquely. "They're applying for a position at Cardiff. I want you to show them around and give them an idea of how things work around here. Use your job as an example and then I'll get the others to fill them in on their jobs, okay?"
Ianto suppressed the urge to sigh. He was almost tempted to tell the Captain that he knew what was happening, but common sense stopped him. If the Captain wanted his plans to be a surprise, he'd be pissed as hell if Ianto ruined them. "Very good, sir. Shall I bring you some coffee?"
Harkness nodded curtly. He never asked Ianto for coffee any more. None of them did. Or food. He made it or ordered it anyway and served it silently. Gwen and Tosh made a point of thanking him every time and Ianto desperately tried to remember how to smile in return. Owen just ignored him the way he always had and Harkness... well, the Captain just looked at him and then turned away.
He served Jack his coffee, and then went to take up station at the reception desk. The others came in and hurried past him. He realised after about ten minutes that it wouldn't be occurring to Harkness that he might need a copy of the interview schedule, so he printed out one for himself and checked to see who was the first person coming.
Jacqueline Nesmith. 27. Born in Oxford, one year experience at Torchwood London in the research department. Degrees in bioengineering, cybernetics and nanotechnology. Hobbies: ju jitsu, fencing and marathon running. Ianto looked up as the door opened and sighed inwardly as a tall, statuesque woman with honey-gold hair and deep blue eyes stepped inside. "Jacqueline Nesmith?" he asked. The Captain would be pleased.
She gave him a quick up and down before nodding. "This is Torchwood?" she asked a little incredulously.
"This is one of the entrances," Ianto corrected. "Let me show you around."
He almost felt sorry for her. She was used to Torchwood London, with its smart environment and corporate focus. She picked her way around the Hub and struggled to conceal her distaste. She thought Ianto was joking when he told her about Myfanwy and she seemed relieved that her suit skirt was too narrow to allow her to climb up the ladder. Just as well. Ianto could hear Myfanwy making the throaty growly sounds that were a warning not to come any closer. She wrinkled her nose as he took her down to the containment cells and Ianto took a petty delight in not warning her about going too close to the door of the Weevil's cell. She gave a yelp when it lunged at her and was only too happy to follow Ianto back up to the ground floor again. Ianto looked up and saw the Captain standing above them, as impassive as ever. He nodded at Jacqueline and Ianto quickly ushered her upstairs. He closed the door on the hearty welcome Jacqueline was given.
He'd barely got back to his desk before Jacqueline was storming past him. He blinked, then realised that Harkness had followed after her, looking exasperated. "Sir?"
"I don't think she appreciates us, Ianto," he said with a wry smile.
Ianto's lips shaped a silent 'oh' and he glanced down at the schedule. "There's a while before the next person is due, sir."
He realised his mistake when Harkness came to stand beside him and looked down at the schedule. When he looked up again, his face was unreadable but Ianto found himself holding his breath and throttling back the urge to back away. There was nowhere to run. There hadn't been since that night. "I-"
"Show him around when he gets here," Harkness said and then left.
Graham Saunders turned up right on time, with a suit every bit as smart as Ianto's and an easy smile and manner. Graduate of Cambridge, degrees in business economics and political science. Hobbies boxing and poker. Fluent in French, German and Russian. He didn't seem fazed by the Hub but he didn't like Myfanwy one little bit and she tried to take his head off with one carefully aimed jab. Ianto took him into the Captain's office and then left to return to his post.
After that, things fell into a kind of rhythm. People arrived; Ianto showed them around, took them into Harkness and then watched them leave. Some left much more quickly than the others, but at least three completed a full interview. He also realised, from their reactions, that the others had no idea what was going on. Tosh had even asked him, and Ianto had simply said that the Captain was interviewing. He left them all speculating what job the interviews were for, feeling more than a little weary. Was he the only one around here that was capable of putting two and two together?
The day drew to a close and the final applicant was ushered out. Patricia Ramirez, 34. Second in command of Facilities on Floor 27 of Torchwood Tower. Previous experience in the catering industry and hotel management. Myfanwy had liked her and she had taken Ianto to task over the state of the containment cells. She depressed Ianto more than all the others put together.
The other three left and Ianto went around clearing up after them. Tosh's workstation was almost neat and he was careful not to shut down anything that was obviously running. Owen had forgotten to shut down his internet connection again and Ianto sighed at the stream of porn cluttering up the computer. How many pages did he have to have open at once, for goodness sake? He shut it all down, and then took considerable pleasure in wiping all the bookmarks and cookies. Gwen's station was extremely untidy. He glanced at the work she was doing, smiled faintly and then sorted the files out; scribbling a few pointers to her on some post-its before making sure everything was shut down. She was still new to Torchwood and didn't know the enormity of the information pool she now had at her disposal.
It didn't take long to finish the cleaning and sort out things for the next day. He climbed up to check on Myfanwy but she was still happily playing with the carcass and wouldn't need any proper feeding for another couple of days. She had been unsettled by all the strange faces so he stayed and sang to her softly, waiting until her eyes had fully lidded and she was crooning along, almost as if she was singing as well. Smiling at his fancy, Ianto climbed back down to find Harkness at the bottom, arms folded and eyes closed as he waited.
"Sir?" Ianto hesitated. Had the Captain been listening? Why would he bother?
"My office," Harkness said.
Swallowing hard, Ianto followed after him obediently, wondering which particular axe was going to fall. Harkness marched up to his desk, then whirled and leaned back against it, arms folded defensively across his chest.
"You know about the interviews," he said flatly. Ianto nodded. "The emails I sent were encrypted."
"Yes, sir."
Something gleamed in the Captain's eyes and he stood upright. Ianto jerked back instinctively, feeling his throat close up, but Harkness caught himself in time and relaxed back again.
"Clever little so-and-so, aren't you?" he said in a soft as butter voice.
Ianto swallowed again but said nothing. He couldn't think of anything he could say that wouldn't get him into even more trouble. After a while, Harkness shrugged and turned away, dismissing him.
"You'd better leave. I'm assuming that you know there will be more interviewees here tomorrow?"
Ianto contented himself with a nod and fled. He hadn't stopped shaking by the time he got back to his house. For a moment he paused in the kitchen, vaguely trying to remember when he ate last. The memory eluded him but the thought of food made him feel ill. He contented himself with a shower before taking some of the tablets Owen didn't realise he had filched and crawling into bed. His last conscious thought before the nightmare-tainted darkness claimed him was to wonder if his going-away present would be a bullet in the head.
OOOO
Jack's initial enthusiasm for the task of interviewing replacements for Ianto didn't last long. He'd never really gone in for the formal interview scenario, preferring a more casual approach, generally allowing fate or circumstance to bring people to his attention. It was an attitude that had always worked pretty well in the past. It also meant he didn't waste his time with people who had completely the wrong attitude for the job he wanted them to do.
Nesmith set the tone for the rest of the day. She had been contemptuous of the Hub and failed to conceal it. She also seemed to think that the job she had come to interview for wasn't the job she should be doing and she didn't take well to Jack making it plain that, yes, that was what he expected of her. She stormed off in a huff and Jack trailed after her, watching with resigned amusement as she slammed out of the Tourist Office, leaving a bewildered Ianto in her wake.
"I don't think she appreciates us, Ianto," he said with a wry smile.
Ianto's lips shaped a silent 'oh' and he glanced down at the schedule. "There's a while before the next person is due, sir."
Blinking in surprise, Jack stepped forward and saw that Ianto had printed out the interview schedule that Jack had put together. That meant he had to know exactly what Jack was doing, even though Jack had encrypted everything. Jack kept the elation off his face with an effort as he looked up, but the look of panic on Ianto's face warned him against making any kind of smart remark.
"Show him around when he gets here," he said and then left.
He checked his computer when he got back to his office but there was no sign of any tampering. Ianto had ghosted in and then out again without leaving some much as a digital scuff mark. Damn, I've got to get him working at his full capacity! Jack thought as he got ready for the next interviewee. Having someone of this calibre cleaning up after them was like having Albert Einstein sorting out the petty cash.
The rest of the applicants came and went, but none of them really made him sit up and take notice apart from the last one. Patricia Ramirez had all of the support skills but lacked the archivist qualifications and told him bluntly that she had only come because she had been told to. She'd also lectured him mildly about the workload the current postholder seemed to be coping with and it was on the tip of Jack's tongue to tell her that Ianto was now doing the equivalent of coasting along, the work barely taxing him and leaving him with far too much time to brood. Instead he had agreed meekly that maybe the job description needed tweaking and they parted more amicably than he had with any of the others.
Once she had left, Jack sat and wrote up the few notes he had taken during the interview. To be honest, the only one he would even consider was Patricia and she would only be able to do half of what Ianto did with such effortless ease that Jack was only now beginning to realise just how essential the man was to the smooth running of Torchwood Three. The others had all gone when he came out of his office and he expected to see Ianto moving around and clearing up, but there was no sign of the young Welshman. Jack did a quick circuit of the Hub and finally tracked him down to Myfanwy's lair.
To Jack's delight, he was singing. He knew that Ianto had got into the habit of doing that to settle the pterodactyl, but Ianto was extremely shy of singing in front of people and if he realised Jack was around he invariably shut up. There had been a time, now seemingly impossibly far in the past, when Ianto had come out with the Team and if sufficiently relaxed (or tipsy) could be persuaded to do a little karaoke. He'd won them their microwave, now sadly deceased. He'd stopped coming after a while, and while Jack had always meant to persuade him to start again, he'd never got around to it and then Lisa had run amok.
Jack leaned back against the wall, folded his arms and just listened, letting the soft voice wash over him. Myfanwy wasn't the only one who found it soothing and he nearly got caught when Ianto eventually finished and climbed back down. He jumped a little and the usual tense, unsettled expression replaced the softer expression that had been there before he had seen Jack.
"Sir?"
"My office," Jack said, deciding against trying anything where they might agitate Myfanwy again.
Ianto followed after him obediently, although the expression on his face very obviously indicated that he expected some kind of doom to be waiting him in Jack's office. Jack leaned back against his desk, arms folded.
"You know about the interviews," he said in as neutral a voice as he could manage. Ianto nodded. "The emails I sent were encrypted."
"Yes, sir."
Jack felt a surge of excitement and shifted without thinking. Ianto jerked back, an expression of panic on his face. Jack caught himself and made a point of relaxing back against the desk.
"Clever little so-and-so, aren't you?" he said in satisfaction.
He realised it was the wrong thing to say when Ianto immediately looked trapped. Jack tried to think of a way to tell Ianto that he was actually pleased that Ianto had caught him out, but he couldn't think of one that wouldn't tip Ianto off that Jack was plotting to make Ianto's life that little bit more interesting and fulfilling. In his current state of mind, Ianto was likely to put the worst possible spin on such an idea. In the end he decided to leave it for a little longer, until he had a replacement and could give Ianto a concrete gameplan rather than a vague proposal.
"You'd better leave. I'm assuming that you know there will be more interviewees here tomorrow?" Ianto hesitated and then nodded, leaving with alacrity when Jack turned away in dismissal.
Left alone, Jack sighed and wondered just how his life had managed to get this complicated so quickly.
OOOO
Second part is here