in the corner of the morning in the past; open to laser_not_sonic

[te_gwas]

As he now tends to be, Ianto is audible long before he's visible.

"Ground Control to Major Tom..."

He wakes up late (not that he tells time anymore), makes breakfast and coffee (barely eats any of it), and wastes the day wandering from room to room in the Master's TARDIS searching for something to occupy him.

"Ground Control to Major Tom..."

Comments

[laser_not_sonic]

It's not difficult to keep a track on Ianto- or the Esquire, as he now occasionally prefers to be known- and the Master chuckles to himself as he catches glimpses of him now and then, as he drifts from room to room, singing brokenly to himself. Poor old Ianto Jones; whatever has become of you? Such a work of art

[te_gwas]

Ianto turns and leans against the console, fingers idly tapping out the rhythm (not that rhythm, not quite) of the song in his head. The Master, he decides, takes the title of Ground Control today. Sometimes it's the Master, sometimes it's Lolita, and sometimes the Ground Control he sings about is something even more ridiculous: a man in a blue box, perhaps, or maybe the faint, pleading voice in the corner of his mind.

Today, though, it's the Master, so he has Major Tom's complete attention.

"The film is a sadd'ning bore," he murmurs, waving his hand to encompass nothing in particular. "For... years and years, I roamed." And as hard as he searches, he can't come up with a suitable lyric, so: "I want to go somewhere interesting."

His face briefly contorts in disgust - oh, he sounds like a petulant child. "Or we could amuse ourselves here," he adds, speaking more evenly than before. "Your choice."

[laser_not_sonic]

Hah, his choice? How very magnanimous of Ianto, offering the Master a choice, as if he had any authority to offer one to him. He might say something to that effect, but Ianto's lucky- today the Master has other plans for him; he doesn't need disciplining now.

Easily fishing the tablet out of his pocket, he draws up his most recent screen and tosses it to Ianto. He expects him to catch it. On the screen is a revolving, three dimensional image of a planet that looks like a mirror image of Sol 3, only upside down and reversed.

'Mondas,' he enunciates, nodding at the screen. 'Once twin planet to your erstwhile home, it... drifted away, out of that solar system, to the so-called "edge of space." Interesting place, at any rate.'

That, of course, is not the thing that makes Mondas so interesting- and so particularly relevant- to the Master and his pet, but Ianto needn't know that just yet.

[te_gwas]

Don't deny Ianto his delusions, Master. He very much enjoys believing that he has any say in the day's proceedings (or in anything at all, really) and demonstrates such after he easily catches the tablet. The planet spinning on the screen is, more literally than he'd imagined, a mirror of Earth. Land instead of water, water instead of land... clearly someone enjoyed experimenting with terraforming far too much.

The name doesn't light up any particular synapses and even the knowledge he'd gleaned from Torchwood turns up nothing of a planet called Mondas. Odd, because he feels he ought to know of it.

"A sister Earth," he says slowly, looking up from the tablet to raise an eyebrow in the Master's direction. "I was hoping for something more... exciting." And see, the delusions he so enjoys - thinking that his displeasure could really sway the Master's choice. Because, really, a backwards Earth? The possibility of more humans, the very species he'd spent so many years trapped with? Not what he'd been expecting.