CONVERSATION, WITH POSTCARDS
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating: Open
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and to RTD
Spoilers: Cyberwoman
Summary: Jack still feels he has some things he needs to discuss with Ianto.
Jack stared at the words on the computer screen in front of him. He blinked - several times - but they refused to rearrange themselves into the kind of sentences he would prefer to see. After a moment, he sighed and printed off the relevant pages, then went in search of Ianto. For once he hadn't hidden himself away in the Archives, his lair of choice at the moment, but was up in the Tourist Office. Jack made his way topside and paused to take a quick look through the spyhole before exiting. Ianto looked up from sorting through some postcards and managed to stop himself frowning, although it obviously took some effort.
"Yes, sir?"
"I've just been reading the files on Lisa that you transferred onto my computer," Jack said without preamble. He tossed the printout on the desk in front of Ianto. "More specifically, I've just been reading about the fact that you state here that you installed a self-destruct in the Hub."
Ianto picked up the printout and tapped the papers together before putting them to one side and getting back to the postcards. "That is correct, sir." He refused to look up and meet Jack's eyes.
With a snort of annoyance, Jack leaned forward and slapped his hand down on top of the postcards. "Look at me!"
Ianto did as he was told and Jack controlled the instinctive flinch when he saw the maelstrom of emotion he saw in the other man's eyes. Then the moment passed and Ianto's gaze was as blank and impassive as it always was these days. And, as always, Jack felt an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out, grab Ianto and shake him until he broke out of this state of utter control that was freaking the hell out of the others.
It wasn't freaking Jack out. Ever since the whole Lisa debacle he'd been going back and reassessing every single interaction he had ever had with Ianto. It had been an eye-opening experience and had made him wonder when he'd had himself lobotomised because, really, there had been enough clues to have made him sit up and take note. The fact that he hadn't, and had merrily continued to take Ianto for granted, made him want to hit something very hard.
"I've been thinking back," he said mildly once Ianto had stopped anticipating an explosion of some kind. "I figure there were four separate occasions when you were going to tell me about Lisa." He noted the way Ianto's eyes widened slightly with satisfaction. "Have I got it about right?"
After a moment, Ianto looked back down at the postcards. "Five." He paused and cleared his throat. "There were five occasions."
Jack nodded. "A lot of missed opportunities," he observed.
"Yes," Ianto said baldly.
There was a minute of two of silence which neither man was willing to break. Eventually Jack shook himself out of his introspection and gave Ianto a cool smile. "So let's talk about this self-destruct, then. On exactly whose authority did you put it in?"
"Mine." There was a hard glitter to the look Ianto gave him. Jack approved of it. He didn't want Ianto to give in to the grief that could so easily consume him.
"And since when did your authority override my own?"
"Since I watched Torchwood One burn because of overconfidence!" Ianto snapped. He closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath before opening them again to give Jack a level look. "I told you that I went into this with my eyes open, Captain. I wasn't the complete idiot that you assume."
Jack frowned. "You realised there was a possibility she was fully converted? You knew that and you still-"
"No!" Ianto snapped, anger surfacing again before it was ruthlessly pulled back under the surface of the ice Ianto had sheathed himself in. "She was not fully converted. I would have known if she had been fully assimilated into the Cyber-mindset. I wouldn't have done all of this if I hadn't believed that there was a chance to free her, Captain, but I wasn't so blind as to not understand that there was a possibility that I might lose her to the conversion process. I needed a failsafe if that should happen."
"Isn't blowing up the Hub to stop a single Cyberman a little like using a mallet to swat a fly?" Jack asked mildly. He watched how Ianto's fingers went white as he clenched the side of the counter.
"I saw what they could do," Ianto finally managed to say. "What they were capable of. I loved Lisa, with all my heart, but there was a price I could not pay. One of my strengths is tactical planning, sir. I ran a scenario for practically every situation I could think of, and built in a safeguard for each eventuality. Blowing up the Hub was the Doomsday scenario."
"So what went wrong?" Jack asked, partly out of genuine curiosity and partly out of a perverse desire to get a rise out of Ianto.
Ianto glowered at him. "You, being you, had to come up with a scenario I hadn't considered." The glower became a real glare when Jack gave an involuntary huff of laughter. "I always worked on Lisa when the rest of you were out of the Hub. When you were here, I kept her sedated or powered down. She had been chained to the conversion unit until that night and since the four of you normally stayed out for at least three hours when you went on your team-building pub crawls, I figured I had enough time to give Dr Tanizaki his chance to do a preliminary diagnosis, get him out of the Hub and power Lisa down again before you got back."
"Except we came back too soon," Jack prompted when Ianto fell silent.
"That, and Tanizaki wanted to do more than just scan and examine her." Ianto sighed. "She was so happy to be freed from the unit...."
"Why the hell did you install a fully functioning conversion unit?" Jack demanded. "Those things are lethal killing machines."
"Those things are also surgical units, designed to convert a human into a Cyberman," Ianto shot back, "and what can be designed to do one thing can also be reprogrammed to do the reverse. I had an entire year to analyse the cursed thing. It had enormous potential as a piece of medical equipment but I needed someone impartial to examine it and tell me what needed to be done."
Jack swallowed a sigh of his own. He'd studied what Ianto had done. Looked at from a purely logistical point of view, it had been a complex and elegant campaign, scenario after scenario considered and contingency plans drawn up. Jack had a vivid mental image of Ianto sitting alone at his computer, summoning up every kind of nightmare his battle-weary mind could come up with and trying to find a way out of every dead end. He'd seen such compulsive and pedantic thoroughness before from men and women reeling from a cataclysmic defeat. Everything down to the number of times they brushed their teeth every morning ruthlessly planned in advance, because they'd learned the hard way that the universe could be a bastard place and sometimes the only way to survive was to control as many variables as possible.
So lonely, though. Jack doubted that Lisa would have been that great a conversationalist, given the references Ianto had let slip to her being drugged or powered down. Now those times when Ianto had appeared in his office at odd hours and asked if he wanted some coffee made sense. Even commonplace conversation was better than none at all. So damned alone.
Like him.
"You haven't given any details on the self-destruct mechanism," he finally said.
This time Ianto's smile had a wolf's edge to it. "At the time, I thought I would be dead in a short while. I thought I'd give you something to occupy you during the shocking grief you would have experienced on my demise," he said sarcastically.
Jack flinched, still remembering the sheer fear he had felt when he had seen Ianto make his suicide bid. "I suppose it would be a waste of time to repeat that I don't want you to die?" he responded a little acerbically.
"I know you have some reason you want me around, but sooner or later I'll make you withdraw that order and then I'll follow after Lisa."
"There's no afterlife, Ianto," Jack said tiredly. "No Heaven or Hell, no being reunited with the people you love. There's only darkness and being alone."
"You're not doing much to dissuade me, you know. The idea of silence and darkness is very appealing at the moment."
Jack made an impatient sound. "Well I'm not going to let you go, so you can just put any ideas about killing yourself on hold," he growled. "About this self-destruct..." He waited but Ianto simply continued to sort the postcards into tidy piles. "I'm still here, you know," he said pointedly.
Ianto gave him a cool smile. "I would have thought that someone of your intelligence and greater experience would be able to locate a simple device placed by a naïve young fool."
Jack stared at him in silence for a moment. "You're not going to tell me."
"No," Ianto said bluntly.
Jack pulled in a deep breath, trying to suppress the distinctly queasy feeling he felt at the thought of a self-destruct remaining in the hands of someone with a definite death-wish. Ianto seemed to realise what he was thinking because the smile slowly softened into something a little less antagonistic.
"I have no intention of setting it off, Captain. I just want to see if you can find it."
After a moment, Jack relaxed and gave him a crooked grin. "Is this a test or revenge?"
Ianto considered the question with his head tilted to one side. "A little of both, I think," he said slowly.
"Do I get a prize if I win?"
Ianto blinked. "You are beyond impossible," he said after a moment. There was a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he slowly nodded. "All right. If you find it and successfully deactivate it, you can have a prize."
"A kiss?"
The anger did its best to flare again, but the amusement still held on. "I was thinking more along the lines of a blueberry muffin and a mug of Yauco Selecto, sir."
"Kiss," Jack held out stubbornly. "Unless you think I'll beat you, of course."
The amusement beat back the anger. "As you wish. Oh, and Captain?" he called after Jack as the other man turned to go back into the Hub.
"Yeah?"
"If you do activate the self-destruct, you'll only have 3 minutes to over-ride it, so I suggest you confine your playing around to when I'm around. Just in case," Ianto said with a look of overdone innocence.
"Riiight," Jack said slowly. Then he gave Ianto a huge grin that obviously surprised the young Welshman before he made for the Hub. He couldn't remember when he'd last had a challenge to equal Mr Ianto Jones and he was thoroughly looking forward to the next few months! "Now where would I be if I was cunningly concealed self-destruct mechanism?" he murmured to himself as he walked by Tosh, ignoring her double-take as he made for his office. Playtime.
OOOO
Next story in chronological order is The Looks On Your Faces at http://tanarian5.livejournal.com/7567.html
Rating: Open
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and to RTD
Spoilers: Cyberwoman
Summary: Jack still feels he has some things he needs to discuss with Ianto.
Jack stared at the words on the computer screen in front of him. He blinked - several times - but they refused to rearrange themselves into the kind of sentences he would prefer to see. After a moment, he sighed and printed off the relevant pages, then went in search of Ianto. For once he hadn't hidden himself away in the Archives, his lair of choice at the moment, but was up in the Tourist Office. Jack made his way topside and paused to take a quick look through the spyhole before exiting. Ianto looked up from sorting through some postcards and managed to stop himself frowning, although it obviously took some effort.
"Yes, sir?"
"I've just been reading the files on Lisa that you transferred onto my computer," Jack said without preamble. He tossed the printout on the desk in front of Ianto. "More specifically, I've just been reading about the fact that you state here that you installed a self-destruct in the Hub."
Ianto picked up the printout and tapped the papers together before putting them to one side and getting back to the postcards. "That is correct, sir." He refused to look up and meet Jack's eyes.
With a snort of annoyance, Jack leaned forward and slapped his hand down on top of the postcards. "Look at me!"
Ianto did as he was told and Jack controlled the instinctive flinch when he saw the maelstrom of emotion he saw in the other man's eyes. Then the moment passed and Ianto's gaze was as blank and impassive as it always was these days. And, as always, Jack felt an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out, grab Ianto and shake him until he broke out of this state of utter control that was freaking the hell out of the others.
It wasn't freaking Jack out. Ever since the whole Lisa debacle he'd been going back and reassessing every single interaction he had ever had with Ianto. It had been an eye-opening experience and had made him wonder when he'd had himself lobotomised because, really, there had been enough clues to have made him sit up and take note. The fact that he hadn't, and had merrily continued to take Ianto for granted, made him want to hit something very hard.
"I've been thinking back," he said mildly once Ianto had stopped anticipating an explosion of some kind. "I figure there were four separate occasions when you were going to tell me about Lisa." He noted the way Ianto's eyes widened slightly with satisfaction. "Have I got it about right?"
After a moment, Ianto looked back down at the postcards. "Five." He paused and cleared his throat. "There were five occasions."
Jack nodded. "A lot of missed opportunities," he observed.
"Yes," Ianto said baldly.
There was a minute of two of silence which neither man was willing to break. Eventually Jack shook himself out of his introspection and gave Ianto a cool smile. "So let's talk about this self-destruct, then. On exactly whose authority did you put it in?"
"Mine." There was a hard glitter to the look Ianto gave him. Jack approved of it. He didn't want Ianto to give in to the grief that could so easily consume him.
"And since when did your authority override my own?"
"Since I watched Torchwood One burn because of overconfidence!" Ianto snapped. He closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath before opening them again to give Jack a level look. "I told you that I went into this with my eyes open, Captain. I wasn't the complete idiot that you assume."
Jack frowned. "You realised there was a possibility she was fully converted? You knew that and you still-"
"No!" Ianto snapped, anger surfacing again before it was ruthlessly pulled back under the surface of the ice Ianto had sheathed himself in. "She was not fully converted. I would have known if she had been fully assimilated into the Cyber-mindset. I wouldn't have done all of this if I hadn't believed that there was a chance to free her, Captain, but I wasn't so blind as to not understand that there was a possibility that I might lose her to the conversion process. I needed a failsafe if that should happen."
"Isn't blowing up the Hub to stop a single Cyberman a little like using a mallet to swat a fly?" Jack asked mildly. He watched how Ianto's fingers went white as he clenched the side of the counter.
"I saw what they could do," Ianto finally managed to say. "What they were capable of. I loved Lisa, with all my heart, but there was a price I could not pay. One of my strengths is tactical planning, sir. I ran a scenario for practically every situation I could think of, and built in a safeguard for each eventuality. Blowing up the Hub was the Doomsday scenario."
"So what went wrong?" Jack asked, partly out of genuine curiosity and partly out of a perverse desire to get a rise out of Ianto.
Ianto glowered at him. "You, being you, had to come up with a scenario I hadn't considered." The glower became a real glare when Jack gave an involuntary huff of laughter. "I always worked on Lisa when the rest of you were out of the Hub. When you were here, I kept her sedated or powered down. She had been chained to the conversion unit until that night and since the four of you normally stayed out for at least three hours when you went on your team-building pub crawls, I figured I had enough time to give Dr Tanizaki his chance to do a preliminary diagnosis, get him out of the Hub and power Lisa down again before you got back."
"Except we came back too soon," Jack prompted when Ianto fell silent.
"That, and Tanizaki wanted to do more than just scan and examine her." Ianto sighed. "She was so happy to be freed from the unit...."
"Why the hell did you install a fully functioning conversion unit?" Jack demanded. "Those things are lethal killing machines."
"Those things are also surgical units, designed to convert a human into a Cyberman," Ianto shot back, "and what can be designed to do one thing can also be reprogrammed to do the reverse. I had an entire year to analyse the cursed thing. It had enormous potential as a piece of medical equipment but I needed someone impartial to examine it and tell me what needed to be done."
Jack swallowed a sigh of his own. He'd studied what Ianto had done. Looked at from a purely logistical point of view, it had been a complex and elegant campaign, scenario after scenario considered and contingency plans drawn up. Jack had a vivid mental image of Ianto sitting alone at his computer, summoning up every kind of nightmare his battle-weary mind could come up with and trying to find a way out of every dead end. He'd seen such compulsive and pedantic thoroughness before from men and women reeling from a cataclysmic defeat. Everything down to the number of times they brushed their teeth every morning ruthlessly planned in advance, because they'd learned the hard way that the universe could be a bastard place and sometimes the only way to survive was to control as many variables as possible.
So lonely, though. Jack doubted that Lisa would have been that great a conversationalist, given the references Ianto had let slip to her being drugged or powered down. Now those times when Ianto had appeared in his office at odd hours and asked if he wanted some coffee made sense. Even commonplace conversation was better than none at all. So damned alone.
Like him.
"You haven't given any details on the self-destruct mechanism," he finally said.
This time Ianto's smile had a wolf's edge to it. "At the time, I thought I would be dead in a short while. I thought I'd give you something to occupy you during the shocking grief you would have experienced on my demise," he said sarcastically.
Jack flinched, still remembering the sheer fear he had felt when he had seen Ianto make his suicide bid. "I suppose it would be a waste of time to repeat that I don't want you to die?" he responded a little acerbically.
"I know you have some reason you want me around, but sooner or later I'll make you withdraw that order and then I'll follow after Lisa."
"There's no afterlife, Ianto," Jack said tiredly. "No Heaven or Hell, no being reunited with the people you love. There's only darkness and being alone."
"You're not doing much to dissuade me, you know. The idea of silence and darkness is very appealing at the moment."
Jack made an impatient sound. "Well I'm not going to let you go, so you can just put any ideas about killing yourself on hold," he growled. "About this self-destruct..." He waited but Ianto simply continued to sort the postcards into tidy piles. "I'm still here, you know," he said pointedly.
Ianto gave him a cool smile. "I would have thought that someone of your intelligence and greater experience would be able to locate a simple device placed by a naïve young fool."
Jack stared at him in silence for a moment. "You're not going to tell me."
"No," Ianto said bluntly.
Jack pulled in a deep breath, trying to suppress the distinctly queasy feeling he felt at the thought of a self-destruct remaining in the hands of someone with a definite death-wish. Ianto seemed to realise what he was thinking because the smile slowly softened into something a little less antagonistic.
"I have no intention of setting it off, Captain. I just want to see if you can find it."
After a moment, Jack relaxed and gave him a crooked grin. "Is this a test or revenge?"
Ianto considered the question with his head tilted to one side. "A little of both, I think," he said slowly.
"Do I get a prize if I win?"
Ianto blinked. "You are beyond impossible," he said after a moment. There was a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he slowly nodded. "All right. If you find it and successfully deactivate it, you can have a prize."
"A kiss?"
The anger did its best to flare again, but the amusement still held on. "I was thinking more along the lines of a blueberry muffin and a mug of Yauco Selecto, sir."
"Kiss," Jack held out stubbornly. "Unless you think I'll beat you, of course."
The amusement beat back the anger. "As you wish. Oh, and Captain?" he called after Jack as the other man turned to go back into the Hub.
"Yeah?"
"If you do activate the self-destruct, you'll only have 3 minutes to over-ride it, so I suggest you confine your playing around to when I'm around. Just in case," Ianto said with a look of overdone innocence.
"Riiight," Jack said slowly. Then he gave Ianto a huge grin that obviously surprised the young Welshman before he made for the Hub. He couldn't remember when he'd last had a challenge to equal Mr Ianto Jones and he was thoroughly looking forward to the next few months! "Now where would I be if I was cunningly concealed self-destruct mechanism?" he murmured to himself as he walked by Tosh, ignoring her double-take as he made for his office. Playtime.
OOOO
Next story in chronological order is The Looks On Your Faces at http://tanarian5.livejournal.com/7567.html