Fic : The Memory of Tears
Title: THE MEMORY OF TEARS
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Lisa
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG for implied violence and death
Spoilers: Major for Cyberwomen
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Summary: In the aftermath of Lisa’s death, Jack has to make decision about Ianto.
He had to really think back to recall a time when he had been so angry. Actually, ‘angry’ didn’t even come close to describing what he was feeling. Jack paced the length and breadth of the Hub, going down to levels he had had avoided for over 75 years, partly searching for confirmation that there were no more surprises hidden deep in the bowels of his home but partly because he needed to work off his anger and he knew that if he left the Hub he would find his way to Ianto’s home and he had only the haziest idea of what would happen then. He was, however, aware enough to know that he really shouldn’t do that.
He knew that part of the anger stemmed from the sheer terror of how close they had come to total disaster. Ianto had just been too good at misdirection. Jack had known that there was something troubling the younger man, and that he had had some ulterior motive behind his desperate desire to get hired by Jack, but Jack hadn’t come anywhere close to realising the truth. He’d figured he had plenty of time to find out and that having Ianto Jones near would be convenient if he decided that he needed to take him out when he did find out what was going on. Besides, the skirmishes had been a lot of fun.
Well, he’d found out what was going on, all right, but having Ianto nearby had been anything but convenient, and there hadn’t any fun at all.
Jack sighed and came to a halt, leaning back against the wall and resting his head against the brickwork. This should be so cut and dried, so easy to sort out. Ianto had betrayed the Team, had betrayed Torchwood, and had betrayed Jack. At the very least he should get retconned, with all memory of Torchwood taken away from him and be damned with the consequences as he tried to adjust to a solid chunk of his life vanishing without any kind of explanation. At worst he would quietly disappear, leaving no ripple to alert anyone that he had been anything other than a statistic. Given the gravity of what Ianto had done, the latter option was the only one that Jack should go for. Ianto had committed treason and deliberately risked the Earth, not to mention wilfully placed his team-mates in danger of suffering a fate that was very definitely worse than death. Normally Jack would have neither problem nor qualms in doing what he knew was right.
All of which kind of neatly led back to the fact that Jack didn’t want to act on any of the options he had quietly listed to himself. He didn’t want to retcon Ianto and he most certainly didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t think it was right to even consider doing any of them, especially when his first instinct on realising that Ianto had been about to commit suicide was to save him. Yes, Ianto had been guilty of the most monumental lapse of judgement. Jack knew the Cybermen and knew that Lisa had been doomed the moment they had installed the cybernetic implants in her, no matter how valiantly she might have fought against the inevitable. Ianto, however, had not realised this and so he had listened to false hope and probably chalked up any personality aberrations Lisa had exhibited to stress and pain. Love makes a person blind and foolish and no-one was more aware of that than Jack.
Besides, Jack had once threatened all human life on Earth for far less noble reasons. He had been given a second chance and he had never looked back. Could he in all conscience deny a similar chance to Ianto? It wasn’t as if Ianto had been doing this for his own elevation or gratification. He hadn’t been wanting to take over the world or even change the world in any way. He had just wanted to save the woman he loved and salvage something from the colossal disaster that was Canary Wharf. His motives were pure even if his reasoning was completely wrong and even though he could have brought about the end of the world, Jack couldn’t really find it in him to hate the younger man.
The really surprising thing was that the rest of the Team weren’t exactly baying for Ianto’s blood. He’d expected Gwen to be the forgiving type and he hadn’t been too surprised when Tosh had shown little sign of wanting Ianto to disappear. Owen, though… Jack had been pleasantly surprised by Owen. The doctor had had plenty to say on the subject of idiotic tea-boys who hadn’t had sense enough to come to a medically qualified genius who was right in front of him instead of depending on some stranger but it had been Owen who had quietly suggested to Jack that they mount some kind of suicide watch on Ianto.
“Trust me, Jack, he’s a big risk. If what he says is true, his entire sad little life has revolved for nearly a year around getting his girlfriend back to health, and before that he was involved in one of the worst examples of alien-caused carnage that’s happened for decades. Now that reason for living has been taken away from him, and violently. If he’s going to snap at all, now would be the time.”
If Owen’s voice had shaken that little bit too revealingly and his eyes been a little bit too bright, Jack had the sense and tact not to comment on it. Jack had given Owen a reason to keep going after Katie’s death and now, it seemed, Owen Harper was willing to let Jack throw the same lifeline to Ianto. Owen wasn’t to know, of course, that Ianto had already tried to take his own life and that Jack had brought him back and made him promise that he wouldn’t make another attempt until Jack gave him permission. The fact that he had done that should have told Jack which direction his thoughts were going in.
Left to his own devices, Jack would not only leave Ianto with his memories intact but would also let him back into Torchwood. The trouble was, he didn’t just have to think about his own survival. He had a team to protect, and they didn’t have the same ability to come back from the dead that he did. He’d told Ianto he was on a month’s suspension and he had temporarily rescinded the young man’s access permissions and passwords, but he wasn’t sure if that would be enough time for Ianto to find some kind of balance. If he made the wrong decision and Ianto broke, it was the team who would pay the ultimate price. Every instinct he possessed was telling him that Ianto could be trusted, no matter what the evidence to the contrary might dictate, but he needed some kind of proof to validate what he believed.
Which was why he was here, and walking through the tunnels to where Lisa had been kept while holding the quantum transducer. Risky though it was, he had to know and this would let him, one way or another. A navigation device that used emotional spikes as frames of reference, it would let him eavesdrop on anything that had happened within Lisa’s room. He wasn’t looking forward to it, since he was pretty certain that two of the spikes would be Tanizaki and Annie’s deaths, but he needed to know. Pushing himself away from the wall, he continued on his way along the corridor. The door to the chamber had just come into sight when the ghost machine suddenly came alive, the indicator signifying a hit suddenly glowing green. He gazed down at the machine in surprise, not expecting something so soon. He hesitated for a moment, but knew he had to take the opportunity that was presenting itself, even if there was a chance that the spike didn‘t relate to Lisa. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button.
The corridor darkened even more and Jack watched as the ghost-image of Ianto walked into view down the corridor before him. For a moment Jack thought the Welshman was going to walk straight through him and he had shifted to one side to avoid the contact, even though he knew they would never connect. Ianto stopped before he reached Jack’s position, however, and looked over his shoulder towards the heavy door he had just closed and locked. After a long moment, his head dropped down until his chin was resting against his chest and he reached out blindly with one hand to lean against the wall.
Like a wall of heavy water, the emotions came crashing down on Jack, picking him up and sweeping him away….
OOO
Ianto stopped and leaned against the cold wall of the corridor, feeling like his chest was going to explode from the effort of holding in the screams of helpless rage and frustration that seemed to build up endlessly these days. Underneath all of that was the endless, ever-present panic. What the hell did he think he was doing? He wasn’t medically qualified and his engineering skills had already been stretched to the limit. His strengths lay in research, in seeing patterns and anticipating the way those patterns developed. He was the one who figured out how things could go wrong and then came up with the contingency plans, He was the one who took care of other people. He was the one who swore that the end never justified the means and that there were lines drawn in the sand for a damn good reason and those lines should never be crossed.
He wondered just when it was that he had broken every oath he had ever sworn and left behind every line he had ever drawn in the sand.
“Lisa…” he choked out.
This was a bad day. One of the worst yet and that was becoming a worrying pattern in itself. She was fighting so hard, being so brave, but there were times when Ianto looked into her eyes and there was no sign of the woman he had been falling head over heels in love with. There would be no sense of Lisa when he reached out with his empathic senses and he would fear the worst, fear the steadily encroaching cold he felt and heard in her eyes and voice. He needed to believe that he could undo this, that he could drag some good from the ashes of Canary Wharf, but on days like this it was difficult to hold on to that dream. On days like this, he started to wonder if his ambition was exceeding his reach. He needed help, but there was no-one he could trust, no-one he could ask to share this burden….
“Jack…” he whispered.
Oh, and the thoughts he had when he uttered Jack’s name were ones that shamed him utterly. He was in love with Lisa; he had risked everything for her and she was depending on him for her life and sanity. She had brought light and warmth into his life as he had carefully negotiated the dangerous waters of Torchwood One, her relative innocence a refreshing change after days spent listening to the xenophobic empire-building of Yvonne Hartman and her ilk. She was the happy-ever-after that Ianto had dared to begin daydreaming about as he worked himself into a position of trust at Canary Wharf and slowly started the change the organisation so desperately needed. She was his safe harbour at the end of a perilous voyage.
Jack Harkness wasn’t a safe harbour. Jack wasn’t a safe anything. Jack was storm and high seas and the mad surge of spring running through your veins. Jack was sharing a joke in the face of some life-threatening situation. He was running through a storm-lashed landscape, one step ahead of disaster and feeling more alive than you ever had before. He was a sharp and beautiful dagger, with an edge that could slice atoms, and just as capable of killing you as of saving your life. He was the fire that could warm your bones or burn you alive. Ianto knew he had never met anyone before who was quite so ambiguous and he was so attracted to the man that spending anything beyond the bare minimum of time with him drove him to distraction.
This was wrong. This was so, so wrong and he was bitterly ashamed of himself, but he longed for the moments he spent with Jack. He revelled in the sensations he felt whenever he was in Jack’s company; the warmth of a shared joke and the frisson of desire that ran under his skin whenever he inhaled Jack’s unique scent or they brushed against one another. There were so many times when he forgot the bleak wasteland his life had become and every one of those times connected back to Jack. The enigmatic Captain had become Ianto’s drug of choice and every day that passed just made Ianto’s silent betrayal all the more reprehensible. He knew that the rest of the team assumed that Jack had hired Ianto for sexual favours but while Jack had flirted and touched and teased, he had never pushed past the barrier that Ianto had erected. Part of Ianto was deeply relieved that he had never had to face that particular temptation but the relief was marred by the knowledge that he would have been unable to say no if Jack had crossed that invisible line.
He kept trying to tell himself that he had the moral high ground. He was doing this to save a life, to make right a terrible wrong. Jack had turned his back on Torchwood One and the survivors and had only sent his people to the smoking ruins to scavenge for alien tech, ignoring the survivors and leaving them to the not-so-tender mercy of UNIT. Ianto had had to fight tooth and nail to get Jack to hire him, his initial efforts being brushed off with a callous indifference that had set Ianto’s teeth on edge and Ianto’s conscience smarted when he thought of the other survivors and their possible fate.
The bottom line, however, was that he was being just as much a hypocrite as any of the others, even if he did think his motives were purer. He had lied to UNIT, lied to Torchwood House, lied to Jack, lied to the team. He had even lied to Lisa on occasion, when she had asked why he wouldn’t do some of the things she asked him to do. If he was honest with himself - and that was becoming more difficult the longer he lived this strange life - Ianto had even started to lie to himself.
It couldn’t go on. He had to stop this before it went too far. He’d found a possible scientist in the Torchwood-sponsored Dr Tanizaki, but he couldn’t be sure that the man could help or even be trusted. Anyone that Yvonne Hartman had considered suitable for grooming was normally someone that Ianto would back away from, but his options were diminishing with every passing day. Lisa was losing; no matter how much he might try and fool himself he knew that to be a fact. The possible consequences if anything went wrong were just too terrible to think about, but he had to think about them.
He had knowingly brought Lisa to Torchwood Three because it was a containable environment, unlike Torchwood House up in the wilds of Scotland If the worst happened, he could trigger a lockdown and destroy the Hub and everything inside it. With any luck he could let the others escape before he pulled the plug but the important thing would be to make sure that the Cyberman menace never threatened Earth again. He didn’t want it to come to that, however, and he still believed that Lisa had a chance, but he was so very tired of shouldering the burden alone. He desperately wanted to believe that Jack would help if Ianto managed to explain things to him properly. All he needed was the right moment-
His earpiece beeped and Ianto straightened unconsciously before touching it into life. “Yes, sir?”
“I need you up here to co-ordinate while we head out, Ianto,” Jack said cheerfully. “We’ve got an alien incursion and I need all of us to head out and see them off.”
“Very well, sir, although they might be friendly.”
Jack snorted. “I doubt it, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. You can’t be too careful, as you well know. Can’t have another Canary Wharf.”
Ianto flinched and just like that, his small spark of hope died. He couldn’t risk that Jack would look at Lisa and see nothing but a monster. “I’ll be right up, sir.”
He glanced back towards the room where Lisa was and the feeling of helpless despair threatened to overwhelm him. He recognised that he was trapped into one course of action now, and all that was left was for him to hope that it would turn out for the best and no-one would get hurt. Pulling his threadbare resolve around himself he turned to go back to the Hub and the lethal attraction that was Jack Harkness…
OOO
Jack sucked in a lungful of air as he felt himself slam back inside his own skull. He leaned back against the wall, struggling to shed the emotions that had swamped him. Not his emotions, he realised as his whirling thoughts gradually calmed. He had been feeling what Ianto had been feeling on that occasion and his gut twisted as he remembered the conflict and despair that had been saturating Ianto’s mind. That kind of emotional burden, continued over a period of months, would be enough to compromise anyone’s state of mind.
He was angry that his own timing had been so lousy. He wondered how many other times Ianto had hovered on the verge of telling him about Lisa, only for something to happen to make him think again. He couldn’t do anything about that, but he had his answer about whether or not Ianto could be trusted. He had made the right decision where Lisa was concerned, but it had been sloppily done, even if there had been only fear and no malice intended. As for Ianto’s declaration that he hated Jack for what he had done, Jack didn’t believe that for a moment. Yes, Ianto hated him right now, but unless Jack missed his guess Ianto hated everything and everyone right now, especially himself. He’d tried to kill himself and Jack had prevented that and bound Ianto to this life with a promise so right now Ianto was in a temper and if there was one surprise in all this mess (apart from the obvious one) it was that meek and mild Ianto Jones had one hell of a temper.
Jack had liked the Ianto who had been working for them these last ten months but he had known there was something wrong, something lurking just under the surface. He hadn’t even come close to working out the truth but the Ianto he had seen during the crisis had been closer to the Ianto he had seen while they had been capturing Myfanwy, and that Ianto was a deeply attractive man. Not just in a sexual sense, either, although Jack was honest enough to admit to himself that now that he was past the terror and betrayal he did feel a frisson of lust where Ianto was concerned. Underneath that lust, however, was a genuine liking for the younger man and a feeling of kinship. Ianto Jones had lost everything in his life and was now feeling utterly betrayed as he struggled to rebuild. Jack knew exactly how that felt. He’d been there, he’d done that and he knew how much he would have appreciated having a friend around while he’d been doing that.
He started to retrace his steps along the corridor. He’d made his decision and Ianto still had a place at Torchwood Three, even if he didn’t want it right now. He was considering his options as he walked and he was taken completely by surprise when the quantum transducer flashed green again. He hesitated as he looked down at the alien device; he’d already received the answers he had been looking for and he wasn’t sure he was up to what was probably going to be another of Lisa’s killings. His hands, however, didn’t seem to be listening to his head and he felt mildly surprised to see his thumb move to press down the button.
OOO
There were moments of clarity but they were bright still centres in the hurricanes of thoughts and feelings that were tearing her apart. Lisa’s world had contracted into a series of snapshots separated by blank spaces. She was aware that time was passing but the times when she was aware and in control were brief and intermittent. Her last truly clear thoughts had been after Tanizaki had liberated her from the cyber-lung and given her back her freedom.
The Japanese doctor had been assisting her back down into the lower levels while Ianto covered their tracks from the returning team. Tanizaki had been going over his immediate plans about how he was going to remove the various implants and considering whether or not it would be better for her to be moved to some other place. Lisa had remembered feeling utter relief at the idea of losing the metal implants that had made her life a living hell. The next thing she had known was looking down at Tanizaki’s mutilated body.
Ianto had arrived and knelt down beside Tanizaki. His horror and disbelief followed by his anguished accusation had left her reeling. Even as she opened her mouth to deny that she had had anything to do with it, she heard her own voice saying words that had nothing to do with what she was thinking. She wanted to scream at the expression on Ianto’s face. She wanted to kneel down beside him and throw her arms around him and feel his own arms around her. She wanted to feel his hot mouth fasten on hers, filling her with passion that left her weak at the knees. Instead she found herself frozen in place, watching as Ianto hauled the body away to hide it.
When the other two members of Harkness’ team had appeared, her own fear of discovery had meant that she hadn’t fought against the instinct to attack first. She would have left it at that but once again she experienced the strange black-out and when she came back the female Torchwood agent was lying fastened in the cyber-conversion unit. Remembering what that felt like, and what would inevitably follow, Lisa wanted to release the woman immediately, but once again the darkness descended and when she came back she was standing in the tunnel, facing Harkness as he stood with the woman beside him and Ianto was standing beside them and gazing at her.
Lisa stared at Ianto, seeing the expressions of grief, terror and defeat on her lover’s face. Deep inside her were the same emotions, alongside rage and disbelief. They had come so far, endured so much, and now, just as they had been hoping that the nightmare would soon be over and they would be together again, everything was going wrong. Lisa focused on Harkness and the rage and jealousy flared. This was all his fault. If he had been a kinder, gentler soul then Ianto would have been able to talk to him about her and they would have been able to have Tanizaki work on her openly. She would have been able to upgrade Tanizaki properly and had time to fine-tune the conversion unit-
She recoiled from the way her thoughts kept twisting away from her, becoming something terrible and unfamiliar. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. All she wanted to be whole and free, so she and Ianto could go away and upgrade everyone else so they could all be free of the pain of knowing that another man had stolen at least part of the heart of the man she loved….
Again she knew that moment of panic as her train of thought was seamlessly channelled into another direction. She flailed around for something to hold on to, something to give her the focus she needed to get past this crisis. She watched as Harkness drew a gun and aimed it at Ianto and she had her focus. Harkness. It all came down to him. She had listened as Ianto had told her about his plans and how he was fitting into Torchwood Three. She had caught the way Ianto often hesitated when talking about Harkness. She had watched the way Ianto had chosen his outfits and tactics when he had been trying to get inside Torchwood Three and realised that Ianto hadn’t seen how his methods had almost been as much a seduction as they were practical necessity. When Ianto had cared for her after she had been moved inside Torchwood Three she had asked him about his life and she doubted he had realised how revealing some of those stories he told her were.
She had known from the beginning that Ianto was bisexual. She had known that he had had male and female lovers before her, although the general consensus seemed to be that whenever he was with a particular person he was completely faithful. She didn’t doubt that he had been physically faithful to her while he had been caring for her since his kisses had always been hungry and passionate. She had started to suspect, however, that where Jack Harkness was concerned, Ianto had been emotionally unfaithful. It was the way he talked about him, the empathy he had for the man and the way he made excuses for him. Lisa had worked at Torchwood One and knew what the general opinion of Harkness was. The man was a dangerous renegade who somehow managed to frustrate Hartman’s plans for Torchwood Three. His motives were suspect, his loyalties even more so. He shouldn’t be causing that note of admiration to creep into Ianto’s voice. He shouldn’t have been able to make her Ianto smile and even laugh.
Right now the man should be putting a bullet through Ianto’s head because of her, but he wasn’t. Instead he was showing the classic signs of a man who was hurting and full of anger because someone he trusted and cared for had apparently betrayed him. The infidelity, it seemed, had been in both directions. Lisa suddenly realised that even if she was successful and went back to being the Lisa that Ianto had fallen in love with, she had no guarantee that she wouldn’t still lose Ianto to Harkness. She wanted to scream her frustration and hate out loud. She wanted to reach out and crush Harkness where he stood. It wasn’t fair! She was better than Harkness, She was better than anyone. She’d prove to Ianto who was the better person. She’d prove it to the whole world and then they’d be s--
OOO
Jack sucked in a deep lungful of air as he staggered back and felt the gritty solidity of the wall stop him before he collapsed on the floor. There was no doubt as to the emotions Lisa had been feeling at that point and Jack felt a twisted guilt that she had hated him so much without his ever realising that she existed. Her resentment and jealousy was balm against his wounded friendship with Ianto, though. The very fact that Lisa had felt those emotions confirmed to Jack that Ianto’s loyalties had become muddled. He might have entered Torchwood Three with a clear intention to use Jack and his resources but it had obviously not been that clear-cut by the end. It helped to know that, to know that Jack’s increasing vulnerability where Ianto was concerned had been mirrored by the Welshman.
Jack stared down at the quantum transducer and pulled in another shaky breath. He had a feeling he had been privy to the moment where Lisa’s humanity had finally lost its battle against the cyber mindset. There had been that one huge blast of resentment, jealousy and determination and then it had winked out, leaving no emotions for the transducer to lock on to. Lisa Hallet, in her human sense, had ceased to exist in those tunnels but Jack suspected that her mind’s death throes had somehow managed to skew the programming of the cyber chip. It would explain why she had remained so obsessive about Ianto and how she had ultimately decided that implanting her brain into the body of the pizza girl would be the best way to achieve her aims.
Sighing sadly to himself, Jack put the transducer away in his pocket and made his way back up to the upper levels of the Hub. For better or worse, Lisa Hallet was dead. Jack had to focus on the living and that meant Ianto Jones, whether Ianto liked it or not.
OOOO
Next story in chronological order is Conversation, With Postcards at http://tanarian5.livejournal.com/1952.html
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Lisa
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG for implied violence and death
Spoilers: Major for Cyberwomen
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Summary: In the aftermath of Lisa’s death, Jack has to make decision about Ianto.
He had to really think back to recall a time when he had been so angry. Actually, ‘angry’ didn’t even come close to describing what he was feeling. Jack paced the length and breadth of the Hub, going down to levels he had had avoided for over 75 years, partly searching for confirmation that there were no more surprises hidden deep in the bowels of his home but partly because he needed to work off his anger and he knew that if he left the Hub he would find his way to Ianto’s home and he had only the haziest idea of what would happen then. He was, however, aware enough to know that he really shouldn’t do that.
He knew that part of the anger stemmed from the sheer terror of how close they had come to total disaster. Ianto had just been too good at misdirection. Jack had known that there was something troubling the younger man, and that he had had some ulterior motive behind his desperate desire to get hired by Jack, but Jack hadn’t come anywhere close to realising the truth. He’d figured he had plenty of time to find out and that having Ianto Jones near would be convenient if he decided that he needed to take him out when he did find out what was going on. Besides, the skirmishes had been a lot of fun.
Well, he’d found out what was going on, all right, but having Ianto nearby had been anything but convenient, and there hadn’t any fun at all.
Jack sighed and came to a halt, leaning back against the wall and resting his head against the brickwork. This should be so cut and dried, so easy to sort out. Ianto had betrayed the Team, had betrayed Torchwood, and had betrayed Jack. At the very least he should get retconned, with all memory of Torchwood taken away from him and be damned with the consequences as he tried to adjust to a solid chunk of his life vanishing without any kind of explanation. At worst he would quietly disappear, leaving no ripple to alert anyone that he had been anything other than a statistic. Given the gravity of what Ianto had done, the latter option was the only one that Jack should go for. Ianto had committed treason and deliberately risked the Earth, not to mention wilfully placed his team-mates in danger of suffering a fate that was very definitely worse than death. Normally Jack would have neither problem nor qualms in doing what he knew was right.
All of which kind of neatly led back to the fact that Jack didn’t want to act on any of the options he had quietly listed to himself. He didn’t want to retcon Ianto and he most certainly didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t think it was right to even consider doing any of them, especially when his first instinct on realising that Ianto had been about to commit suicide was to save him. Yes, Ianto had been guilty of the most monumental lapse of judgement. Jack knew the Cybermen and knew that Lisa had been doomed the moment they had installed the cybernetic implants in her, no matter how valiantly she might have fought against the inevitable. Ianto, however, had not realised this and so he had listened to false hope and probably chalked up any personality aberrations Lisa had exhibited to stress and pain. Love makes a person blind and foolish and no-one was more aware of that than Jack.
Besides, Jack had once threatened all human life on Earth for far less noble reasons. He had been given a second chance and he had never looked back. Could he in all conscience deny a similar chance to Ianto? It wasn’t as if Ianto had been doing this for his own elevation or gratification. He hadn’t been wanting to take over the world or even change the world in any way. He had just wanted to save the woman he loved and salvage something from the colossal disaster that was Canary Wharf. His motives were pure even if his reasoning was completely wrong and even though he could have brought about the end of the world, Jack couldn’t really find it in him to hate the younger man.
The really surprising thing was that the rest of the Team weren’t exactly baying for Ianto’s blood. He’d expected Gwen to be the forgiving type and he hadn’t been too surprised when Tosh had shown little sign of wanting Ianto to disappear. Owen, though… Jack had been pleasantly surprised by Owen. The doctor had had plenty to say on the subject of idiotic tea-boys who hadn’t had sense enough to come to a medically qualified genius who was right in front of him instead of depending on some stranger but it had been Owen who had quietly suggested to Jack that they mount some kind of suicide watch on Ianto.
“Trust me, Jack, he’s a big risk. If what he says is true, his entire sad little life has revolved for nearly a year around getting his girlfriend back to health, and before that he was involved in one of the worst examples of alien-caused carnage that’s happened for decades. Now that reason for living has been taken away from him, and violently. If he’s going to snap at all, now would be the time.”
If Owen’s voice had shaken that little bit too revealingly and his eyes been a little bit too bright, Jack had the sense and tact not to comment on it. Jack had given Owen a reason to keep going after Katie’s death and now, it seemed, Owen Harper was willing to let Jack throw the same lifeline to Ianto. Owen wasn’t to know, of course, that Ianto had already tried to take his own life and that Jack had brought him back and made him promise that he wouldn’t make another attempt until Jack gave him permission. The fact that he had done that should have told Jack which direction his thoughts were going in.
Left to his own devices, Jack would not only leave Ianto with his memories intact but would also let him back into Torchwood. The trouble was, he didn’t just have to think about his own survival. He had a team to protect, and they didn’t have the same ability to come back from the dead that he did. He’d told Ianto he was on a month’s suspension and he had temporarily rescinded the young man’s access permissions and passwords, but he wasn’t sure if that would be enough time for Ianto to find some kind of balance. If he made the wrong decision and Ianto broke, it was the team who would pay the ultimate price. Every instinct he possessed was telling him that Ianto could be trusted, no matter what the evidence to the contrary might dictate, but he needed some kind of proof to validate what he believed.
Which was why he was here, and walking through the tunnels to where Lisa had been kept while holding the quantum transducer. Risky though it was, he had to know and this would let him, one way or another. A navigation device that used emotional spikes as frames of reference, it would let him eavesdrop on anything that had happened within Lisa’s room. He wasn’t looking forward to it, since he was pretty certain that two of the spikes would be Tanizaki and Annie’s deaths, but he needed to know. Pushing himself away from the wall, he continued on his way along the corridor. The door to the chamber had just come into sight when the ghost machine suddenly came alive, the indicator signifying a hit suddenly glowing green. He gazed down at the machine in surprise, not expecting something so soon. He hesitated for a moment, but knew he had to take the opportunity that was presenting itself, even if there was a chance that the spike didn‘t relate to Lisa. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button.
The corridor darkened even more and Jack watched as the ghost-image of Ianto walked into view down the corridor before him. For a moment Jack thought the Welshman was going to walk straight through him and he had shifted to one side to avoid the contact, even though he knew they would never connect. Ianto stopped before he reached Jack’s position, however, and looked over his shoulder towards the heavy door he had just closed and locked. After a long moment, his head dropped down until his chin was resting against his chest and he reached out blindly with one hand to lean against the wall.
Like a wall of heavy water, the emotions came crashing down on Jack, picking him up and sweeping him away….
OOO
Ianto stopped and leaned against the cold wall of the corridor, feeling like his chest was going to explode from the effort of holding in the screams of helpless rage and frustration that seemed to build up endlessly these days. Underneath all of that was the endless, ever-present panic. What the hell did he think he was doing? He wasn’t medically qualified and his engineering skills had already been stretched to the limit. His strengths lay in research, in seeing patterns and anticipating the way those patterns developed. He was the one who figured out how things could go wrong and then came up with the contingency plans, He was the one who took care of other people. He was the one who swore that the end never justified the means and that there were lines drawn in the sand for a damn good reason and those lines should never be crossed.
He wondered just when it was that he had broken every oath he had ever sworn and left behind every line he had ever drawn in the sand.
“Lisa…” he choked out.
This was a bad day. One of the worst yet and that was becoming a worrying pattern in itself. She was fighting so hard, being so brave, but there were times when Ianto looked into her eyes and there was no sign of the woman he had been falling head over heels in love with. There would be no sense of Lisa when he reached out with his empathic senses and he would fear the worst, fear the steadily encroaching cold he felt and heard in her eyes and voice. He needed to believe that he could undo this, that he could drag some good from the ashes of Canary Wharf, but on days like this it was difficult to hold on to that dream. On days like this, he started to wonder if his ambition was exceeding his reach. He needed help, but there was no-one he could trust, no-one he could ask to share this burden….
“Jack…” he whispered.
Oh, and the thoughts he had when he uttered Jack’s name were ones that shamed him utterly. He was in love with Lisa; he had risked everything for her and she was depending on him for her life and sanity. She had brought light and warmth into his life as he had carefully negotiated the dangerous waters of Torchwood One, her relative innocence a refreshing change after days spent listening to the xenophobic empire-building of Yvonne Hartman and her ilk. She was the happy-ever-after that Ianto had dared to begin daydreaming about as he worked himself into a position of trust at Canary Wharf and slowly started the change the organisation so desperately needed. She was his safe harbour at the end of a perilous voyage.
Jack Harkness wasn’t a safe harbour. Jack wasn’t a safe anything. Jack was storm and high seas and the mad surge of spring running through your veins. Jack was sharing a joke in the face of some life-threatening situation. He was running through a storm-lashed landscape, one step ahead of disaster and feeling more alive than you ever had before. He was a sharp and beautiful dagger, with an edge that could slice atoms, and just as capable of killing you as of saving your life. He was the fire that could warm your bones or burn you alive. Ianto knew he had never met anyone before who was quite so ambiguous and he was so attracted to the man that spending anything beyond the bare minimum of time with him drove him to distraction.
This was wrong. This was so, so wrong and he was bitterly ashamed of himself, but he longed for the moments he spent with Jack. He revelled in the sensations he felt whenever he was in Jack’s company; the warmth of a shared joke and the frisson of desire that ran under his skin whenever he inhaled Jack’s unique scent or they brushed against one another. There were so many times when he forgot the bleak wasteland his life had become and every one of those times connected back to Jack. The enigmatic Captain had become Ianto’s drug of choice and every day that passed just made Ianto’s silent betrayal all the more reprehensible. He knew that the rest of the team assumed that Jack had hired Ianto for sexual favours but while Jack had flirted and touched and teased, he had never pushed past the barrier that Ianto had erected. Part of Ianto was deeply relieved that he had never had to face that particular temptation but the relief was marred by the knowledge that he would have been unable to say no if Jack had crossed that invisible line.
He kept trying to tell himself that he had the moral high ground. He was doing this to save a life, to make right a terrible wrong. Jack had turned his back on Torchwood One and the survivors and had only sent his people to the smoking ruins to scavenge for alien tech, ignoring the survivors and leaving them to the not-so-tender mercy of UNIT. Ianto had had to fight tooth and nail to get Jack to hire him, his initial efforts being brushed off with a callous indifference that had set Ianto’s teeth on edge and Ianto’s conscience smarted when he thought of the other survivors and their possible fate.
The bottom line, however, was that he was being just as much a hypocrite as any of the others, even if he did think his motives were purer. He had lied to UNIT, lied to Torchwood House, lied to Jack, lied to the team. He had even lied to Lisa on occasion, when she had asked why he wouldn’t do some of the things she asked him to do. If he was honest with himself - and that was becoming more difficult the longer he lived this strange life - Ianto had even started to lie to himself.
It couldn’t go on. He had to stop this before it went too far. He’d found a possible scientist in the Torchwood-sponsored Dr Tanizaki, but he couldn’t be sure that the man could help or even be trusted. Anyone that Yvonne Hartman had considered suitable for grooming was normally someone that Ianto would back away from, but his options were diminishing with every passing day. Lisa was losing; no matter how much he might try and fool himself he knew that to be a fact. The possible consequences if anything went wrong were just too terrible to think about, but he had to think about them.
He had knowingly brought Lisa to Torchwood Three because it was a containable environment, unlike Torchwood House up in the wilds of Scotland If the worst happened, he could trigger a lockdown and destroy the Hub and everything inside it. With any luck he could let the others escape before he pulled the plug but the important thing would be to make sure that the Cyberman menace never threatened Earth again. He didn’t want it to come to that, however, and he still believed that Lisa had a chance, but he was so very tired of shouldering the burden alone. He desperately wanted to believe that Jack would help if Ianto managed to explain things to him properly. All he needed was the right moment-
His earpiece beeped and Ianto straightened unconsciously before touching it into life. “Yes, sir?”
“I need you up here to co-ordinate while we head out, Ianto,” Jack said cheerfully. “We’ve got an alien incursion and I need all of us to head out and see them off.”
“Very well, sir, although they might be friendly.”
Jack snorted. “I doubt it, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. You can’t be too careful, as you well know. Can’t have another Canary Wharf.”
Ianto flinched and just like that, his small spark of hope died. He couldn’t risk that Jack would look at Lisa and see nothing but a monster. “I’ll be right up, sir.”
He glanced back towards the room where Lisa was and the feeling of helpless despair threatened to overwhelm him. He recognised that he was trapped into one course of action now, and all that was left was for him to hope that it would turn out for the best and no-one would get hurt. Pulling his threadbare resolve around himself he turned to go back to the Hub and the lethal attraction that was Jack Harkness…
OOO
Jack sucked in a lungful of air as he felt himself slam back inside his own skull. He leaned back against the wall, struggling to shed the emotions that had swamped him. Not his emotions, he realised as his whirling thoughts gradually calmed. He had been feeling what Ianto had been feeling on that occasion and his gut twisted as he remembered the conflict and despair that had been saturating Ianto’s mind. That kind of emotional burden, continued over a period of months, would be enough to compromise anyone’s state of mind.
He was angry that his own timing had been so lousy. He wondered how many other times Ianto had hovered on the verge of telling him about Lisa, only for something to happen to make him think again. He couldn’t do anything about that, but he had his answer about whether or not Ianto could be trusted. He had made the right decision where Lisa was concerned, but it had been sloppily done, even if there had been only fear and no malice intended. As for Ianto’s declaration that he hated Jack for what he had done, Jack didn’t believe that for a moment. Yes, Ianto hated him right now, but unless Jack missed his guess Ianto hated everything and everyone right now, especially himself. He’d tried to kill himself and Jack had prevented that and bound Ianto to this life with a promise so right now Ianto was in a temper and if there was one surprise in all this mess (apart from the obvious one) it was that meek and mild Ianto Jones had one hell of a temper.
Jack had liked the Ianto who had been working for them these last ten months but he had known there was something wrong, something lurking just under the surface. He hadn’t even come close to working out the truth but the Ianto he had seen during the crisis had been closer to the Ianto he had seen while they had been capturing Myfanwy, and that Ianto was a deeply attractive man. Not just in a sexual sense, either, although Jack was honest enough to admit to himself that now that he was past the terror and betrayal he did feel a frisson of lust where Ianto was concerned. Underneath that lust, however, was a genuine liking for the younger man and a feeling of kinship. Ianto Jones had lost everything in his life and was now feeling utterly betrayed as he struggled to rebuild. Jack knew exactly how that felt. He’d been there, he’d done that and he knew how much he would have appreciated having a friend around while he’d been doing that.
He started to retrace his steps along the corridor. He’d made his decision and Ianto still had a place at Torchwood Three, even if he didn’t want it right now. He was considering his options as he walked and he was taken completely by surprise when the quantum transducer flashed green again. He hesitated as he looked down at the alien device; he’d already received the answers he had been looking for and he wasn’t sure he was up to what was probably going to be another of Lisa’s killings. His hands, however, didn’t seem to be listening to his head and he felt mildly surprised to see his thumb move to press down the button.
OOO
There were moments of clarity but they were bright still centres in the hurricanes of thoughts and feelings that were tearing her apart. Lisa’s world had contracted into a series of snapshots separated by blank spaces. She was aware that time was passing but the times when she was aware and in control were brief and intermittent. Her last truly clear thoughts had been after Tanizaki had liberated her from the cyber-lung and given her back her freedom.
The Japanese doctor had been assisting her back down into the lower levels while Ianto covered their tracks from the returning team. Tanizaki had been going over his immediate plans about how he was going to remove the various implants and considering whether or not it would be better for her to be moved to some other place. Lisa had remembered feeling utter relief at the idea of losing the metal implants that had made her life a living hell. The next thing she had known was looking down at Tanizaki’s mutilated body.
Ianto had arrived and knelt down beside Tanizaki. His horror and disbelief followed by his anguished accusation had left her reeling. Even as she opened her mouth to deny that she had had anything to do with it, she heard her own voice saying words that had nothing to do with what she was thinking. She wanted to scream at the expression on Ianto’s face. She wanted to kneel down beside him and throw her arms around him and feel his own arms around her. She wanted to feel his hot mouth fasten on hers, filling her with passion that left her weak at the knees. Instead she found herself frozen in place, watching as Ianto hauled the body away to hide it.
When the other two members of Harkness’ team had appeared, her own fear of discovery had meant that she hadn’t fought against the instinct to attack first. She would have left it at that but once again she experienced the strange black-out and when she came back the female Torchwood agent was lying fastened in the cyber-conversion unit. Remembering what that felt like, and what would inevitably follow, Lisa wanted to release the woman immediately, but once again the darkness descended and when she came back she was standing in the tunnel, facing Harkness as he stood with the woman beside him and Ianto was standing beside them and gazing at her.
Lisa stared at Ianto, seeing the expressions of grief, terror and defeat on her lover’s face. Deep inside her were the same emotions, alongside rage and disbelief. They had come so far, endured so much, and now, just as they had been hoping that the nightmare would soon be over and they would be together again, everything was going wrong. Lisa focused on Harkness and the rage and jealousy flared. This was all his fault. If he had been a kinder, gentler soul then Ianto would have been able to talk to him about her and they would have been able to have Tanizaki work on her openly. She would have been able to upgrade Tanizaki properly and had time to fine-tune the conversion unit-
She recoiled from the way her thoughts kept twisting away from her, becoming something terrible and unfamiliar. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. All she wanted to be whole and free, so she and Ianto could go away and upgrade everyone else so they could all be free of the pain of knowing that another man had stolen at least part of the heart of the man she loved….
Again she knew that moment of panic as her train of thought was seamlessly channelled into another direction. She flailed around for something to hold on to, something to give her the focus she needed to get past this crisis. She watched as Harkness drew a gun and aimed it at Ianto and she had her focus. Harkness. It all came down to him. She had listened as Ianto had told her about his plans and how he was fitting into Torchwood Three. She had caught the way Ianto often hesitated when talking about Harkness. She had watched the way Ianto had chosen his outfits and tactics when he had been trying to get inside Torchwood Three and realised that Ianto hadn’t seen how his methods had almost been as much a seduction as they were practical necessity. When Ianto had cared for her after she had been moved inside Torchwood Three she had asked him about his life and she doubted he had realised how revealing some of those stories he told her were.
She had known from the beginning that Ianto was bisexual. She had known that he had had male and female lovers before her, although the general consensus seemed to be that whenever he was with a particular person he was completely faithful. She didn’t doubt that he had been physically faithful to her while he had been caring for her since his kisses had always been hungry and passionate. She had started to suspect, however, that where Jack Harkness was concerned, Ianto had been emotionally unfaithful. It was the way he talked about him, the empathy he had for the man and the way he made excuses for him. Lisa had worked at Torchwood One and knew what the general opinion of Harkness was. The man was a dangerous renegade who somehow managed to frustrate Hartman’s plans for Torchwood Three. His motives were suspect, his loyalties even more so. He shouldn’t be causing that note of admiration to creep into Ianto’s voice. He shouldn’t have been able to make her Ianto smile and even laugh.
Right now the man should be putting a bullet through Ianto’s head because of her, but he wasn’t. Instead he was showing the classic signs of a man who was hurting and full of anger because someone he trusted and cared for had apparently betrayed him. The infidelity, it seemed, had been in both directions. Lisa suddenly realised that even if she was successful and went back to being the Lisa that Ianto had fallen in love with, she had no guarantee that she wouldn’t still lose Ianto to Harkness. She wanted to scream her frustration and hate out loud. She wanted to reach out and crush Harkness where he stood. It wasn’t fair! She was better than Harkness, She was better than anyone. She’d prove to Ianto who was the better person. She’d prove it to the whole world and then they’d be s--
OOO
Jack sucked in a deep lungful of air as he staggered back and felt the gritty solidity of the wall stop him before he collapsed on the floor. There was no doubt as to the emotions Lisa had been feeling at that point and Jack felt a twisted guilt that she had hated him so much without his ever realising that she existed. Her resentment and jealousy was balm against his wounded friendship with Ianto, though. The very fact that Lisa had felt those emotions confirmed to Jack that Ianto’s loyalties had become muddled. He might have entered Torchwood Three with a clear intention to use Jack and his resources but it had obviously not been that clear-cut by the end. It helped to know that, to know that Jack’s increasing vulnerability where Ianto was concerned had been mirrored by the Welshman.
Jack stared down at the quantum transducer and pulled in another shaky breath. He had a feeling he had been privy to the moment where Lisa’s humanity had finally lost its battle against the cyber mindset. There had been that one huge blast of resentment, jealousy and determination and then it had winked out, leaving no emotions for the transducer to lock on to. Lisa Hallet, in her human sense, had ceased to exist in those tunnels but Jack suspected that her mind’s death throes had somehow managed to skew the programming of the cyber chip. It would explain why she had remained so obsessive about Ianto and how she had ultimately decided that implanting her brain into the body of the pizza girl would be the best way to achieve her aims.
Sighing sadly to himself, Jack put the transducer away in his pocket and made his way back up to the upper levels of the Hub. For better or worse, Lisa Hallet was dead. Jack had to focus on the living and that meant Ianto Jones, whether Ianto liked it or not.
OOOO
Next story in chronological order is Conversation, With Postcards at http://tanarian5.livejournal.com/1952.html