Chapter Text
The Rose of Jericho is the common name for several species of "resurrection plants" -- so called for their habit of reviving after seeming to be dead.
I. Relax, said the night man
We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave
(The Eagles)
"Name?"
"Lieutenant Yuan Zhang, UNIT medical officer." He taps the ID clipped to the pocket of his lab coat pointedly, repressing a sigh. As though the day hasn't been long enough already; this is the fourth guard to stop him.
The guard peers at the ID suspiciously. "This is a quarantine zone. What's your purpose here?"
Yuan doesn't quite roll his eyes, but it's a near thing. "UNIT is handling the investigation into the biological attack; I've orders to begin the autopsies. Your superiors ought to have been notified several hours ago--" Yuan glances down at the guard's lapel "--Sergeant Grimes." Not that Yuan makes a habit of pulling rank -- he doesn't have much to pull, after all -- but on occasion, it can be great fun. Anything to make this miserable evening a little brighter.
Grimes has the wrong sort of complexion for enduring embarrassment; his pale skin flushes nearly as red as his hair. "We were, sir," he grinds out. He glances down at the clipboard in his hands, checking it over. "But I was told to expect a Dr. Martha Jones."
"You and me both," Yuan mutters. "She was meant to return to London this morning, but her flight was cancelled due to...well." What's the proper term for it, after all? Riots would be accurate, but hardly encompassing enough; mass panic somehow implies it wasn't a perfectly justifiable reaction to the events of the day; alien invasion just doesn't sit right. Attempted murder of millions of children sounds downright treasonous, and Yuan knows better than to advertise his particular sentiments on the matter. He plows on ahead. "So she's stuck on the Continent and my arse was hauled off my very comfortable couch so that I could cut up a bunch of corpses rather than enjoy a very nice bottle of gin in front of my telly tonight. Go ahead and turn me away; you'd be doing me a favor."
Frustration and ill--temper make him honest; almost to his chagrin, it works. Grimes even cracks a smile. "Amen to that, sir," he says, setting the paperwork aside and swiping his card at the door, which opens. "Go on in. Mind you wear a mask."
Yuan does roll his eyes this time. "If the pathogen remains that virulent, a surgical mask won't do anyone much good, and I know they've already allowed people in to identify the bodies. Your 'quarantine zone' is a joke, Sergeant."
Grimes shrugs uncomfortably and follows him in.
They'd set up an impromptu morgue, here in the basement of Thames House. It isn't pleasant. Though the air conditioning is set on high, and the weather outside can hardly be considered springtime, this place doesn't have the proper refrigeration facilities for the purpose, and time is beginning to take its usual toll. It's been more than twenty-four hours since the 456 released their virus; there are over a hundred bodies that have been sitting out for over a day. The smell isn't terribly noticeable yet, probably thanks to the bags, but it will be soon. Fucking government bureaucracies, Yuan thinks bitterly, and dons his scrubs. And, yes, the surgical mask. He knows his business, thank you very much. At least they've provided him with all the necessary equipment.
"Are you really going to watch?" he asks Grimes skeptically; the young man is no doctor, clearly, given the squeamish look on his face as he glances around at the body bags.
Grimes swallows hard. "I have orders to remain and observe, sir."
"Oh, for the love of God," Yuan sighs. "Fine. Don't just stand there, then; help me get this body onto the table." He selects his first corpse at random, by virtue of being the nearest body bag to hand; he and Grimes carefully manhandle it onto the gurney.
There's a tag around the victim's wrist, identifying her as Harriman, Elizabeth. Date of birth 7 October, 1969. She's still fully dressed in business attire -- civil servant, possibly a PA; the gold band around her finger means that she was someone's wife, maybe even a mother...
"Do you have kids?" Grimes asks unexpectedly, as though the same thought has just passed through his head.
"No," Yuan says, pulling his voice recorder out of his bag to prepare for the autopsy notes. "But my brother in Hong Kong has a daughter. She just turned five."
Grimes shifts his weight uncomfortably, staring at anything but the body. "I've a nephew in Sheffield." He pauses, then adds, "I've been stationed here in Thames House since 0600."
Neither of them participated in the riots earlier that day, then. Yuan might have military rank, but he's no soldier -- oh, he had basic training, of course, but he'd only made it through by the skin of his teeth. Some men just aren't meant to carry a weapon, and that wasn't what UNIT recruited him for.
Just as well. If he'd been on the streets this morning, he's not entirely sure which side he'd have ended up fighting on -- and by the sound of it, neither is Grimes.
Filthy fucking business, the lot of it. God, Yuan could use a drink right now. He shakes his head and turns his attention back to the task at hand. Autopsy, right. His instructions are straightforward: identify the virus used by the 456 -- an airborne pathogen of extraordinary virulence, though it clearly didn't survive long in the open, given that no infection has been reported beyond the initial wave of attack -- determine its full pathology, examine possibility of developing an antivirus. In case the 456 ever return, he supposes, though he doesn't know how likely that is. At any rate, at first blush, the pathogen seems to have functioned more like a poison than a proper virus...
He reaches down to begin undressing the corpse, and that's when he finally notices.
"What the hell?"
Grimes starts, looking up at him. "Sir?"
"Look at her," Yuan demands. "I realize you're not a doctor, but just look for a second, and think. What's wrong with this picture?"
His face pale, Grimes makes a cursory examination of Elizabeth Harriman's body, not daring to edge any closer. "She's, um, dead?"
"She's been dead for more than a day, in a body bag, without refrigeration," Yuan says, not even bothering with the first three scathing retorts that came to mind. "But she looks as though she only died an hour ago, at most." He presses a latex--gloved finger to her neck, where the pulse would have been. "Her body temperature is cool, below normal, but not nearly as low as it ought to be, in this room; rigor mortis has not even begun to set in--" He carefully lifts her torso, pulling up the hem of her shirt as he does so. "No noticeable lividity in her blood vessels, despite having been lain on her back since shortly after time of death. And no signs of decomposition in her skin tissues, no odor of decay whatsoever. For a dead woman, she's been remarkably well preserved."
"But...the stink in here..." Grimes shakes his head, bewildered. "I mean, it's not bad, but you can still -- it's death, right, you can smell it."
"Check the other bodies," Yuan orders at once. "All of them. See if there are any more like this one. She may have no pulse, but I'm not so sure she isn't still alive."
There are a hundred and twenty-two corpses in body bags in the improvised morgue.
Thirty-nine of them aren't dead.
"Name?"
"Ianto Jones. I have an interview at two o'clock."
The young man behind the reception desk glanced down at his calendar. "Yes, that's right. Please have a seat. I'll let them know you've arrived."
"Thanks." Ianto took a seat off to the side, trying not to crease his new suit in the process. He felt absurdly overdressed, like an impostor; how the hell did anyone ever get comfortable wearing this sort of thing every day?
He glanced around, taking in the dull corporate look of the place. Just like him in his conservative three-piece suit, blandly attractive and anonymous. Good to know he'd chosen correctly. The chairs in reception were comfortable, at least, and the feel of the leather upholstery spoke of generous funding. Not the usual government front, then, Woodley Consulting.
But Ianto knew that already.
When the receptionist finally led him into the conference room -- too large for an interview, too posh, chosen to intimidate -- Ianto found three people seated on one side of the broad table. He thought he might have seen one before -- the man, thirty-something, clearly born into money, sharp green eyes. Ianto flipped through the photo album of his memory, matched the face. Yes. At the investigation site, in what looked to be military duds, but no insignia. Ianto remembered. He always remembered.
The other two -- both women, one middle-aged with dyed blonde hair, the other youngish and black, both attractive in very different ways -- were both strangers. He hadn't seen either of them before. Well, they went into the mental album along with Faux-Military Man (now introduced as Harry Upshaw).
At first, the interview was excruciatingly routine. The usual introductions, CV check (his university experience and a string of odd jobs, half fabricated), what-can-you-bring-to-the-table sort of questions. Ianto answered on autopilot, politely engaging, gauging their reactions, boring them as pleasantly as possible. He could've doctored up a truly impressive resume, but that might have set off alarms. They'd been curious enough to bring him in. That was all he needed.
"So why do you want to work with Woodley Consulting?" the blonde woman -- Jaime Miller -- finally asked.
Ianto took a deep breath. It was now or never. "I don't, actually."
They looked up at him, startled. The younger woman -- Lisa Hallett -- raised a curious eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"I don't want to work with Woodley Consulting," Ianto repeated. "Because Woodley Consulting doesn't exist."
Miller and Upshaw exchanged an inscrutable glance, but Hallett kept her eyes on Ianto, a smile quirking the corners of her generous mouth. "And yet," she said, "here we are."
"Here we are," Ianto agreed. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the file he'd so carefully assembled. "Three weeks ago, an unidentified craft crashed into a field outside of Wallingford. Local police investigating were evicted from the site by a military special ops force." He pulled out the appropriate documentations as he spoke, laying them on the table in front of him. "That same team was previously seen investigating reports of mysterious gas in Milton Keynes, a missing persons case on a London council estate, and a minor explosion by the Thames which coincided with shop window dummies coming alive and rampaging through the centre of town -- which, according to all television and government reports, never actually happened. Eyewitness accounts also changed dramatically within twenty--four hours of the incident -- after this particular special ops team arrived on the scene." He tapped one particular glossy photograph, looking up at the three impassive faces across the table. "A team with no apparent military insignia or designation, which was evidently led by Mr. Upshaw here."
There was a long, heavy silence. Ianto sat it out as patiently as he could and tried not to sweat.
"I'm sorry," Miller finally said, in a tone of utter disinterest, "but was there supposed to be a point to this little presentation?"
Ianto smiled blandly. "The crash is on record as a military accident, but the RAF reported no activity in that airspace for months. The missing girl -- Rose Tyler -- police think her boyfriend had a hand in her disappearance, but there's no evidence, and he claims she's been abducted by an alien. And the shop dummies--"
"Proceed to the point, if you have one," Hallett said. She was clearly suppressing a smile, which Ianto took as a positive sign, despite her stony-faced colleagues.
"I think there's more out there than this," Ianto said. "More than I can begin to imagine or document. And I think the organization you represent knows that for a fact. I want to join up."
"And what qualifications could you possibly bring to the table?" Upshaw asked coldly.
"I managed to find you," Ianto pointed out. He kept his hands folded in his lap, below the table, where no one could see them shaking. His voice remained perfectly steady. "Despite the considerable efforts and resources you have at your disposal to keep people like me ignorant. Wouldn't you prefer to have me working for you?"
Upshaw bristled visible. "Is that some sort of threat?"
Ianto raised an eyebrow. "What possible threat could I pose to you? I couldn't begin to expose you -- with, what, a handful of circumstantial evidence and flimsy conjecture? Who would listen? Besides, I know what happens to people who see your work firsthand. I assume the only way I'm walking out of here with my memories intact is if you hire me."
That was another piece of very flimsy conjecture, actually, but the looks they exchanged confirmed it. Well. It occurred to Ianto to wonder what sort of organization he was volunteering himself for, exactly -- but he didn't much care.
There was something more out there, and anything was better than where he'd started.
And after a long moment, Lisa Hallett laughed. "All that, and looks good in a suit. Oh, Yvonne will like this one!" She glanced over at Miller and Upshaw. "Trial period?"
"Three weeks," Miller confirmed, giving Ianto a hard look. She scribbled a note down on a piece of paper and passed it across the table to him. "I hope you're a quick learner, Ianto Jones. Tomorrow morning, eight o'clock sharp."
Ianto looked down at the note. It was an address. "Canary Wharf?"
"Fancy enough for you?" Lisa teased with a grin. "Welcome to Torchwood."
Though she has no way of knowing it then, the last time Martha will ever see Jack Harkness is at Canary Wharf.
Two days after she finally returns to London, four days after the 456 are dispatched, and three years to the day after the Battle of Canary Wharf, Martha goes to leave a flower at the monument marking the only grave her cousin Adeola has. It's become a tradition. The first time was just a couple of months after the attack, when the new memorial in the tiny park by the Thames was unveiled. Martha attended with her family, thinking she'd lost her cousin in a terrorist attack. The second time, on the first proper anniversary, she'd known better. The Doctor had allowed her the stop without question, but refused to set foot outside of the TARDIS himself.
By the second anniversary, Martha was on her own again, and she'd added a second flower by the name of Rose Tyler. Not so much for Rose herself, safely if irretrievably ensconced in some parallel universe, but for the Doctor, who would never leave flowers here. For the uncounted millions lost and then found again during a year that never happened. For everyone the Doctor was just too late to save, and everyone left behind. Maybe Rose didn't deserve to be made into a symbol like that, but she was just a name to Martha, and she'd have to do.
Martha knows Rose a bit better now, but the symbol remains; there are so many more to mourn today, and she doesn't know where else to leave the flowers.
There is no list of the dead and missing in the wake of the 456. Because there was no actual attack, the governments of the world insist; just some mildly frightening parlor tricks. After all, disaster was averted. No children were taken. The aliens were vanquished. Planet saved.
They don't count the victims of the riots that spread across the globe, children wrenched screaming away as soldiers beat back parents in the poorer districts of London and New York, New Delhi and Beijing. The "accidental" and unremarked upon deaths. The soldiers executed by their own officers when they tried to stand down or look after their own sons and daughters, nieces and nephews.
The memorial to Canary Wharf is nothing fancy, just the names carved into stark white marble plinths, waist height, set in gently curving rows around a central monument. Martha leaves a small cluster of daisies by Adeola's name. There are a few other tributes scattered about the blocks of marble today -- flowers here and there, or stones piled atop names. But not many. People forget, and they move on. Besides, it's been a hell of a week.
When she moves on down the row to her second stop, she sees a single pink rose already adorning the name of Rose Tyler.
The Doctor doesn't leave flowers at Canary Wharf. There's really only one other person who might visit Rose's marker today -- and there, partially obscured by the tall central monument, she sees a man in a familiar blue-grey coat leaning over another marble plaque.
She calls out to him.
"Voice of a nightingale," Jack says, turning to face her, hands tucked deep in the pockets of his coat. She meant to throw her arms around him, but something in the set of his shoulders and the shadows in his eyes makes her keep her distance.
"Jack," she says, uncertain. "I've been trying to reach you for days."
He shrugs. His face is like granite, completely devoid of expression. Part of her wonders if this isn't Jack at all -- or maybe not her Jack. This man -- well, she's seen Jack die before, more than once. But this is the first time he's ever looked dead.
"I heard you're the one sent the 456 packing," she tries again, stepping closer. It feels incredibly wrong to be invading his personal space like this -- it's meant to be the other way around, Jack coming too close, pushing too hard. Not her. "Not that anyone's explained how, and Torchwood's like a dirty word these days, mention it and all the top brass flinch. Your mobile's out of service, and Gwen and Ianto haven't been answering theirs--"
Jack's the one who flinches now. She may as well have slammed a door in his face.
Martha reaches out to him, feeling the rough wool of his greatcoat under her fingertips, the warmth of his arm. It's strange that he's still so warm when his eyes are so cold. "Jack, what happened here?"
He looks down, but she doesn't think he's actually seeing her at all. "Enjoy your honeymoon, Martha?"
The casual cruelty of it feels like a slap, and she yanks her hand away from his arm. "Don't you dare. We tried to get back, to get through to someone, anything. I was blacked out of this one entirely. And now UNIT's in an uproar, half my superiors have been sacked, and everyone's too scared to say anything until the chain of command shakes itself back out."
Jack just watches her impassively. "I told them to place you on the Thames House investigation."
Her hands clench into fists at her side. Oh, the Thames House fiasco -- yet another unremarked list of the dead that she doesn't have the security clearance to even see. "They did, then yanked me right back off. Used to be the Doctor was my ticket in; now it's all us vs. them mentality, and I'm a bloody alien sympathizer. It's been four days and I can't even get a straight answer as to how we got rid of the 456--"
"We did," Jack says. His eyes are empty. "That's all that matters, right?"
"Jack, please, talk to me--"
"Did you ever try calling him?" Jack demands instead. "Last week, when everything was going to hell?"
No, she just bloody well sat around and shagged her new husband. What does he think she did? "I tried."
There's a flicker of life in his face at last, a flare in his eyes that might be anger. "And?"
"He said he was sorry," she tells him, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her tone. "But that the twenty-first century is when everything changes, and he couldn't interfere."
If anything, Jack stiffens further, lips pressing flat together. "So," he says, more exhalation than word.
They stand in silence for a few long minutes, together yet utterly separate, staring out at this monument to Torchwood's folly, to the Doctor's success and failure. Martha has never felt so perfectly alone.
Finally, Jack shifts beside her. "Do you know who's heading up UNIT's investigation of Thames House in your place?"
Martha wonders why he's so fixated on that in particular. Had he been there? "A colleague of mine is heading up the medical end of it -- Yuan Zhang, decent bloke, great scientist. Better choice than I would've been, actually -- much stronger research background. He's been sequestered, last I heard."
"I need a favor."
Martha looks up into his face, tears pricking her eyes. He's never been so distant, not with her. What's wrong with him? "Anything, Jack," she tells him softly. "You know I'd do anything for you. God, Jack, I've been so worried about you and--"
"I need you to get in touch with your friend Yuan, and ask him--" Jack swallows, looking away and back. There's an edge to his voice now, like broken glass. "Ask him why they haven't released the bodies of the Thames House victims to their families." Which is rather rich coming from him, given what she knows of Torchwood's own post-mortem policies, but before she can point it out, he goes on. "Ask him when they'll let his sister give Ianto a proper burial."
It's almost a physical blow, visceral, as though she's been punched in the stomach. She exhales sharply, putting her hand on the nearest marble marker to steady herself. "Oh, no," she whispers. "I didn't know, no one told me. Jack--"
"Don't," he says harshly. "Just let Gwen know what you find out. Her mobile should be working again now."
"And what about you?"
He smiles then, a ghastly approximation of his usual grin. "Oh, you know me. I'll live."
She knows then that he's leaving.
Jack reaches out to cup her cheek in his warm, broad hand. "Be well, Martha Jones," he tells her, voice low and sincere, and then he turns and walks away.
In the many years of her long, well-lived life, Martha will never forget the sight of Jack Harkness walking away from her, shoulders perfectly straight, greatcoat billowing behind him blue-grey among the stark white marble monuments.
She flips open her mobile, knowing precisely the correct pattern of PAs and uncollected favors to call on to reach him. "Dr. Zhang," she says, finally, tracing names on the nearest block of marble. "I need to ask you a few questions about Thames House. It's about a friend."
A single yellow rose adorns the memorial Jack had stood over, by the engraved name of Lisa Hallett. Martha absently wonders who she was.
Nine days after Lisa (and was that how he'd always measure out his life now? Ianto wondered -- Before and After Lisa), Ianto found a bench on the Plass and sat down to wait, staring out at the windswept bay.
It didn't take long.
"I'm pretty sure I said you were suspended for four weeks," Jack said from behind him. Ianto didn't even flinch. "Four weeks. Granted, it's been well over a month if we're going on Betelgeusean time, but in this particular solar orbit--"
"I want to come back to work."
That caught Jack by surprise. Ianto could feel the difference in the air between them, the sudden stillness, taut with tension.
"That's not your call to make," Jack finally said.
Ianto risked a glance up at him, turning to see. Jack had folded his arms across his chest. He still had a mark on his lip where Ianto had punched him, brown and not yet healed. His eyes were devoid of expression.
"I know," Ianto said, looking away again. "But I have to -- please. I'm ready."
"The team isn't, though," Jack said.
"Hiding me away for three more weeks won't make them trust me again."
"Trying to con your way into a job -- again -- won't make me trust you again."
It wasn't anything Ianto hadn't expected. It might've hurt if he weren't already completely numb. "I know," he said, throat raw. "So stick me in the archives in front of five CCTV cameras and change all the authorization codes so I can only get into the files you assign me. Or keep me in the middle of the Hub where everyone can see what I'm doing at all times. Or make me work in a cell and throw away the bloody key, I don't care. Just give me something to do, please."
He'd spent the past nine days alone inside his own head. Nineteen more and he'd put a bullet in his brain just to drown out the screaming.
"Funny thing about punishments," Jack said. His tone was deliberately light, but Ianto could hear the edge of steel underneath. "You don't generally get to negotiate."
"I know," Ianto said, doing his best not to punch Jack (again). And Jack was in the right this time. That was what he hated most of all. "But I can't--" He cut himself off, frustrated with Jack, with himself. "Please," he said again, because it was the only word he seemed to have left.
Something in his tone got through to Jack, at least a little. He sat down on the bench beside Ianto. "You've just lost someone you loved, Ianto," he said quietly. Their legs nearly brushed, an echo of intimacy that made Ianto flinch. "You need time to mourn."
Ianto clenched his fists in his lap, willing his voice to remain low and steady. "With all due respect, sir, you haven't the faintest idea what I need." He swallowed hard. "I've had nothing but time. Lisa died at Canary Wharf. I've been mourning her ever since. I just didn't realize it."
It had the benefit of being true; but more importantly, it was what Jack wanted to hear.
They sat together in silence for a few more minutes, not quite touching. Ianto could feel the warmth radiating in the air between them, and hated himself just a little more.
Finally, Jack got to his feet, looking out at the Bay. Ianto stared down at his hands and pressed his lips together, swallowing the words back.
"I'll see you Monday," Jack said.
Ianto took a deep breath, and then another. It got a little easier every time.
Gwen sits on the steps in front of the Millennium Centre, staring down at what's left of Roald Dahl Plass. The worst of the debris has already been cleared away from the surface over the past week, but it'll be some time before she can begin investigating the extent of the damages. Hopefully the blast hasn't penetrated all the sublevels -- Torchwood Cardiff had dug in deep, and a good amount of the archives, at least, might be salvageable. Not to mention the heart of the Hub itself, the alien mainframe, which is buried deepest of all. She's never really thought about it -- not her area of expertise, to put it mildly -- but if they'd been able to access the remote servers from pilfered laptops, then surely something must remain. A place from which to start rebuilding, at least.
God, the sheer scope of the task ahead of her is...well beyond daunting, really. And to do it all alone...
Well. One step at a time. There isn't anything in particular Gwen can do here today, anyway. Just wait. And witness. Anyway, Rhys will be picking her up in a few minutes--
"Excuse me, miss? I'm looking for Torchwood."
Gwen's heart stutters, misses a beat. She looks up to see an unfamiliar man standing in front of her -- about her own age, black, stocky build, wearing a leather jacket and an expression of determination. "And who the hell are you, then?" she demands.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, squaring his shoulders. "My name's Mickey Smith. I know you -- you're one of the people who called up the Doctor a few months back. I traveled with him for a bit, and Jack -- well, sort of. Anyway, after we got back, Jack said if I ever wanted a job, I should meet him here. So here I am. Where's Jack got himself to?"
"I don't know," she says, without really thinking about it. The name sounds vaguely familiar -- has Jack mentioned him before? After they called up the Doctor -- the Daleks and the Medusa Cascade -- with Martha -- oh! "Mickey Smith -- that's right. I think Jack said you're good with computers or something?"
For the first time, Mickey smiles. "Yeah, or something."
We could've used a tech expert, Gwen thinks, a little bitterly. God, wouldn't that have made their lives easier, the past few months? Not that Ianto isn't good with computers, but he doesn't have anything like Tosh's flair for creative programming, and lord only knows he's got enough on his plate these days--
Had. Past tense. It doesn't matter now. She swallows back the nausea that accompanies the memory, telling herself it's just morning sickness anyway. "What took you so long?" she says instead, a little uncharitably. "It's been months since the Daleks."
Mickey shrugs, looking down at his trainers. "I'd been...away. For kind of a long time. I needed to reorient myself. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, anyway. Like I said, getting messed up with the Doctor and all that -- well, it's a bit much, you know? I thought I'd let other people save the world for a change."
She wonders why he's being so open with her, a complete stranger. He doesn't seem like the type -- too bloke-ish, she'd have said. "Then why come looking for us now?"
He meets her eyes again, mouth pressed into a grim line. "Last week. The kids, and aliens, and all, and there's me stranded with no power to do a damn thing about it. It woke me back up. The world still needs saving. I can help. I'm not sitting this one out again."
Gwen looks him over, feeling very tired. About her age, she thought, but right now, she feels much older. "Jack's missing," she says. "I don't know where he is. And I don't know when -- if -- he's coming back."
Mickey's mouth twists into a wry smirk. "Ran off and left you to clean up the mess, did he? He's spent too much time with the Doctor, then."
The bitterness rises up again, half-forgotten over the past year or so but made newly potent, like an old scar reopened, with the 456's attack. The Doctor. Some savior he's turned out to be. Gwen gets to her feet, brushing the gravel off her trousers. "Yeah. It was nice to meet you, Mickey Smith, but I'm afraid I don't have a job to offer you. Try UNIT, they're always looking for fresh meat."
"What, so the bloody Rift shuts down just 'cause Jack swans off?" Mickey argues, folding his arms across his chest. "I remember the shitstorm it opened up here last time I was in Cardiff."
"And what do you expect to be able to do about it?" Gwen demands. She points down at the gaping wound in the earth that used to be the Hub. "Everything we had -- everything we knew -- all our tech, the archives, the weapons, the Rift monitor -- it's all a bloody crater. I'm flying blind here, I barely even know where to begin. And this job, Mickey, it eats you alive."
"I know dangerous," Mickey says with a shrug. "I spent three years hunting Cybermen, you think I can't handle myself?"
Gwen presses her fingers to her temples. He just doesn't get it. "I joined up almost three years ago," she explains, lowering her voice. "First time I met Torchwood, there were five of them on the team, each more brilliant than the last. Clever, and tough, and with more experience than I could even begin to imagine. And it didn't save any of them. Only Jack couldn't die, but even he finally broke, in the end."
"They all chose it though, didn't they?" Mickey says. His voice is gruff, but there's empathy in his eyes. "So. Let me take my own chances, yeah? I choose Torchwood."
"I'm sorry, Mickey, but there is no Torchwood anymore. There's just me." She hears the honk of a car horn, and looks across the shattered remains of the Plass to see Rhys there at the curb, waiting for her. "And I've got a memorial service to get to."
"Right, I understand." Mickey steps aside, letting her pass. "I'll be starting Monday, then, yeah?"
"Yeah," Gwen sighs. "I kind of figured."
The Rift was quiet just after Jack disappeared, like a snake slowly digesting its latest meal. Ianto didn't much appreciate the downtime. It was too much like mourning, a moment of silence, reminiscent of hours and days trapped in his lonely flat with Lisa in a drawer in the morgue and too much time to think.
He didn't know which was worse at night now: his empty flat or the silent Hub. One evening about a week in, he found himself in Tosh's kitchen, getting drunk on cheap wine. She'd cleaned up the CCTV footage and spotted the police box on the Plass. Ianto recognized it at once, and suddenly Jack's occasional cryptic, offhand remarks made a lot more sense.
"Do you think he's coming back?" Tosh asked, after her fourth glass of wine.
Ianto swallowed his own (fifth? Sixth?) in one gulp, grimaced, and refilled it to the brim. "Would you?"
They'd both encountered the Doctor. They'd read the reports. They knew.
"Jack came for me, once," Tosh said quietly. "When no one else would. He didn't even know me, but he came for me."
Ianto had already read her file, back when he was still studying his new coworkers, learning how best to disappear from them. "He wanted your skills," he said, alcohol making him too blunt. "Your genius. Not you."
Tosh lifts her shoulders in a vague shrug. "Does that really matter? I was trapped, and he set me free."
He didn't free you, just transferred ownership, Ianto thought. Jack owns you. "Yeah," was all he said aloud. "Me, too."
They refilled their drinks.
"What should we tell Gwen and Owen?" Tosh wondered.
"Tell them to stop looking."
He fell asleep on her couch at some ungodly hour in the morning, and woke up with a sour taste in his mouth and a pounding headache. All in all, it had been one of the better nights.
That was the morning fifty sentient pincushions started wreaking havoc in Llandaff Cathedral, which pretty much meant business as usual. Owen deduced that the pincushions were controlled by a sort of hive mind, but they got stuck after Tosh traced the signal back to a crashed pod of some sort.
"There's got to be a way of rounding them up without killing them outright," Gwen insisted while something squealed in the background; she and Tosh were on site, while Owen sulked in his med bay and Ianto manned the comms. "Ow!"
"Yeah, and if we knew where E.T. phones home, I might be able to help you out with that," Owen said. "But until we figure out what the hell these bastards are, nothin' doin'."
"Jack would've known," Tosh said, sounding rather out of breath.
"Yeah, well, Jack isn't here," Owen snapped.
"But we are." Gwen's tone brooked no argument. "So what do we know?"
For a minute, no one responded. Then Ianto shook his head to clear it. This was how it would have to be, from here on out, and there was no point moaning about Jack's absence. He was gone. Maybe he'd come back, maybe he wouldn't, but in the meantime, they'd get by.
Ianto was good at getting by.
"Well," he said, as he strode over to the nearest computer terminal, "I think if I cross-reference the data with a search through the archive mainframe..."
And they got to work.
The service is nice enough, Rhys supposes. He's always harbored a secret fondness for tradition -- families and friends and communities gathering together, big white wedding dresses or solemn funeral corteges, everyone done up in their Sunday finest to outdo their neighbors and whinge about the quality of the potluck. There's just something inherently comforting about meandering sermons and matrons in enormous hats.
But Ianto's memorial service just leaves him feeling hollow inside. There's nothing wrong with it, exactly -- but there's nothing right about it either. There's no burial because the government still hasn't released the bodies; the people who get up to speak give heartfelt platitudes about some distant young stranger Rhys never met. The whole business just doesn't seem to have anything to do with the sarcastic, smartly-dressed Ianto Jones of Torchwood.
Ianto may have been close-mouthed about his past (and God knows he was reserved enough about everything else; Rhys isn't entirely sure why that surprised Gwen), but Rhys suspects that these people, in this worn-down church, are the ones who never really knew him.
They make up a sad little contingent in the back of the church, the Torchwood section. Just Gwen and Rhys, and a somewhat battered Andy (currently suspended without pay from the police force) tagging along in a show of support. Jack is nowhere in evidence. Rhys is inclined to be furious with the man for leaving Gwen alone to face a day like this -- and he's got a particularly potent rant brewing about who should or should not have been the one to give Rhiannon the news in the first place -- but at the same time, sitting through this empty blather, he's hard pressed to blame the man. If it'd been his Gwen instead -- this service of strangers, a memorial with no resemblance to his own memories of his lover -- well.
Still, Jack should be here. But he's not.
Rhys has a feeling this is a recurring theme in the life and times of Captain Jack Harkness.
His mind wanders, and he can see Gwen's gaze roving around the edges of the church, lingering at the doorways, the shadows. Looking for Jack, like always. He wonders if this will set the pattern for the remainder of their days, a part of Gwen always absent, always searching, always waiting for that last--minute save. But Rhys doesn't think Jack has any more heroic entrances left in him.
But because she's looking for Jack, she spots the newcomer almost at once. Rhys sees the change in her face, the spark of curiosity mingled with confusion, just as she jabs a sharp elbow into his side.
"Oi," he hisses, keeping his voice down. "What's--" He follows her gaze, to the back door of the church. "That can't be -- Lois?"
It is, though. Lois Habiba, their woman on the inside, for all the bloody good it'd done. She gestures to them frantically. Gwen and Rhys exchange a look -- it'll seem fair rude to walk out of the service now, but for once, Rhys isn't going to argue the point. He sighs and shifts himself, moving out of the pew, letting Gwen tug a bewildered Andy along with her. The little church is only half full (more of Rhiannon's friends than ever had anything to do with Ianto, although Rhys supposes a few might've been his childhood playmates or acquaintances), and by staying at the back, Gwen had ensured there was no one sitting near them. Rhys almost wonders if she expected this.
Well, that was bloody Torchwood though, right? Gwen always prepared for the job to come first. Nothing could be sacred, not even grief.
Ianto had been the same. He'd have understood.
"Sorry, I'm so sorry," Lois says, once they're outside. It's a chilly, gray day, though at least it's not raining for once. "I meant to come for the service, only I found out about it a little too late, and I couldn't catch as early a train as I'd have liked, and then the bus was late out of Cardiff Central, but I suppose that's all for the best because that's how I noticed the thing in the road and I couldn't think of anyone else to tell about it--"
"Okay, okay," Gwen says soothingly, her hand on Lois's arm. "Slow down." Rhys might've asked how Lois found out about Ianto's memorial service at all, or why she'd come, but of course PC Gwen Cooper picked right up on: "What sort of 'thing in the road' are we talking about, here?"
"It's just down the street, by the bus shelter." Lois's dark eyes are wide. "At least it was a few minutes ago. It's -- I don't really know how to describe it. It's like light, and color, except not. It was whirling about in circles in the air over the road -- not high up, about eye level. But there was this...violence about it. I don't know." She shudders. "Like a bird beating itself against the side of its cage."
Andy, beside them, shakes his head wryly. "Yeah, sounds like one of your X--Files, all right."
"Right," Gwen says. "Andy Davidson, meet Lois Habiba. She spied on the government for us last week. Without her--"
Gwen cuts herself off abruptly, with a little choked sound. Rhys takes her hand wordlessly. Without Lois's help, Jack and Ianto might never have got into Thames House. And Ianto might not have died there. But on the other hand, Jack never would've been in place to stop the 456, and they all would've paid the price for that, in the end. Who could say? Sometimes all you could do was play the hand you were dealt.
"Without her, we'd none of us be standing here," Rhys says, because someone has to. "Let's go find your angry little rainbow, then."
"Right," Gwen says, shaking her head as if to clear it. She straightens her shoulders, standing just that much taller. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. Rhys, there's a kit in the boot of the car -- could you and Andy grab that, please? I'll head down the road with Lois and see what the situation is..."
Eventually, all it takes is a butterfly net and a large glass jar. Gwen herds the rainbow-light-thing into the jar with the net, and clamps it shut. The creature isn't very large, nearly insubstantial, and seems to fold in upon itself once captured, still pulsing with color. Rhys feels the strangest sense of anticlimax -- catching aliens oughtn't be that simple.
Then again, it usually isn't.
"What is it?" Andy asks, staring transfixed at the lights dancing within the jar.
Gwen shakes her head. "I don't know. But it's beautiful."
"Beautiful, and lost, and sad," Lois says, then blinks. "But how do I know that?"
"Low-grade empathic field, I think." Gwen tilts her head, frowning slightly as she considers it. "Maybe that's how it communicates."
"Before, when I found it, it felt...terrified." Lois reaches out to the jar, as if to press her hand against the glass, then drops her hand to her side. "And angry. But that faded."
Gwen's eyes are shuttered and dark. Rhys slips an arm across her shoulders. "What is it, love?"
For a moment, he doesn't think she even heard him; then a shudder ripples through her, and she leans against him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. "Jack would've known what it was," she says, voice low and rough at the edges with grief. "And Ianto could've cited three examples of related encounters from the archives. But now it's just me, and I don't bloody know anything. God, Rhys, how could I have lost them both?"
He has nothing to say to that, so he just holds her as tightly as he can.
Two days later, the jar is empty. When Gwen opens it, they glimpse a brief shimmering, like the memory of a handful of glitter tossed in the air, and then it's gone.
The lights were still on in the medical bay, long after Owen had conceded defeat and gone home. To do what, Ianto didn't know. Not sleep, apparently; not anymore. He shoved the thought and its accompanying chill aside.
"It's very late," he told Martha, leaning down over the railing. "And it's been a particularly stressful day. Why are you still here?"
Martha ticked something off on her clipboard, studying what looked like test results. "Just finishing up some tests -- Owen's blood work, before and after."
"Can't it wait?"
She sighed, rolling her shoulders with an audible pop. "Probably, but if there's anything useful in there--"
"Then it'll still be useful tomorrow," Ianto said gently. "It is tomorrow, actually. Nearly one in the morning. You should get some sleep."
"Probably," Martha agreed, but she kept staring down at her charts. "Why are you still here?"
"Cleaning up."
Martha frowned, glancing around. "We didn't make much of a mess here--"
"That's not what I meant." Ianto lowered himself to sit on the steps leading down to the medical bay, rubbing the back of his neck. At Martha's bemused look, he elaborated: "The incident at the hospital. Altering records, handling the eyewitnesses -- the usual."
"Twelve people died today because Owen -- because of what Jack did," Martha said flatly. "And you're covering it all up."
Ianto shrugged. "It's my job."
"That doesn't bother you at all?"
"I didn't say that," Ianto said. "But it has to be done."
Martha sighed. Her face had regained its youth and vigor, but her eyes looked very old. "I know. Don't listen to me, Ianto, I'm just...very tired."
Ianto got to his feet. "No offense taken. Go back to your hotel, get some rest."
"Yeah," Martha said, finally putting the clipboard down. "You too. Go home, I mean. Or -- wherever you go." She let out an embarrassed giggle at his smirk, tired though it was, then sobered again. "Ianto..."
He turned back, hand on the railing. "Yes?"
"If Jack ever wonders why I turned down his offer to join his team -- well, this is why. You know?"
Ianto just nodded and left her there. He understood. Martha wasn't Torchwood, never would be. She had something else to believe in, and maybe it was even something better. Ianto didn't. He never had -- not after a childhood spent yearning for a world beyond himself, grasping after anything at all. Torchwood had him then. And once it had you, it never let go. Canary Wharf fell, Lisa was killed, Jack ran off for his Doctor -- the only constant in Ianto's life was Torchwood. Good or bad, this was all he had left.
Later, staring out into the darkness under Jack's office, Jack warm at his back, Ianto took a breath and said what they'd all been thinking all day. "You shouldn't have brought him back."
For a long minute, Jack remained silent. "You're the one who said that gloves came in pairs, remember?" he said, in a light tone belied by the tension in his arms, the hard grip of his hand on Ianto's hip.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "That was meant to be a warning, not a suggestion."
"You'd rather I let him die?"
At that, Ianto rolled over to face him, pulling back slightly. "You know that's not what I meant."
"Ianto..."
"What you did," Ianto started hesitantly, unsure of the right words. "You'd have done that for any of us, wouldn't you? If someone else...if it had been me--"
"Don't," Jack said. His voice was harsh. "Don't ask me what I'd have done if it had been you. Just don't."
Ianto tried on a smile in an attempt to diffuse the tension. "You know, for someone who outlives everyone he meets, you're utter rubbish at letting go."
"You're one to talk," Jack retorted, but he pulled Ianto in to nip at his earlobe, effectively ending the not-quite-argument the way he always did when he knew he was losing.
And Ianto let him, as he always did.
"Just, please, Jack," he murmured into Jack's neck, not sure if Jack would even hear him, "if -- when it's my turn, please don't go looking for another glove."
Jack's arms tightened around him. He didn't say a word.
When Rhys sees the new hub -- helping Mickey move the monolithic new servers in -- he laughs so hard he nearly makes himself sick.
"It's only temporary," Gwen reminds him, but she can't keep the corners of her mouth from twitching.
Lois glances back and forth between them, frown creasing her forehead. She's only spent an entire bloody week scouting various locations before settling on this one, after all. "What's wrong with it? It's a lovely office -- walking distance to Mermaid Quay, plenty of space for a small staff, flexible short-term lease, very reasonable rate for the area, Mickey can install our own security system..."
"It's perfect, Lois, thank you," Gwen says, touching her arm. "It's just rather more...ordinary than we're used to."
"Torchwood goes corporate," Rhys chuckles. "I never thought I'd see the day."
There's a pounding on the door. "Oi!" Mickey shouts. "You lot gonna help me with the load-in or what? You won't believe the alien arsenal I scavenged from the crater this morning!"
"Well," Gwen says thoughtfully. "Maybe not too ordinary."
Once the morning's plunder has been hauled in -- and Lois wonders how on earth she's ever going to devise an effective filing system for the arcane rubble -- Mickey and Gwen work to get the computers up and running.
"Three years ago, Gwen could barely navigate the difference between a word document and a spreadsheet," Rhys remarks, leaning companionably against Lois's new desk, "and now she's installing alien software."
"We all picked up a few tricks," Gwen calls over, flashing them a smile that Lois can't help but return. "Small team, everyone has to learn a bit of everyone else's job in a pinch. And it's not like there's anyone else familiar with the Torchwood mainframe now--"
Lois can see the renewed crush of memory flash across her face, and bites her cheek to keep from saying anything stupid or trite about it. Anyway, it's not her place to offer comfort to this woman -- this impossibly willful woman with the gap-toothed grin and red-rimmed eyes.
She wonders how Captain Harkness ever could have left her.
Fortunately, Mickey -- who seems to have all the tact and insight of a brick to the head -- fills the sudden silence with a blithe, "No worries, give me a week and I'll be rewriting your alien software." He taps cheerfully at his keyboard, already engrossed in the code dancing across the monitor. "The blast wasn't as effective as it looked. The mainframe itself was more or less undamaged -- well, the outer shell got dinged up a bit, but the hardware inside is safe enough. Whoever first dug that place out knew what they were about -- the foundations are solid to start rebuilding."
Gwen visibly stiffens. "Rebuilding?"
"Well, yeah," Mickey says. "You said yourself, this place is only temporary. When I join up with a secret alien-hunting organization, I bloody well expect a kickass underground lair to come with it. You've still got a level or two of archives mostly intact down there, too. Seems silly to find a whole new place."
"Who's supposed to be in charge here, again?"
"And besides," Mickey adds, "when Jack gets back, you'll want him to be able to find us."
Gwen presses her hand to the hollow of her throat, eyes wide and dark. "You think he's coming back?" Lois unconsciously mirrors the gesture, feeling something twist in her chest.
Mickey grins crookedly. "Are you kidding? He's like a bad penny, that one. He always turns up eventually."
At that, Gwen turns away from her desk, making a soft sound that seems caught partway between an exhalation and a sob; Rhys is at her side at once, hand low on her back, pressing his lips to her temple. Lois just blinks at them for a moment, not sure what to do with herself.
"Here," Mickey says gruffly, leaning over her to type a few commands into her own computer. She hadn't even noticed him getting up from his workstation. "You're gonna be working with the archives, yeah? A lot of that info's been scanned into the servers -- here, I'll show you how to navigate the database."
It's not until much later that afternoon that she realizes how effectively Mickey distracted her -- and gave Gwen a chance to sort herself in the meantime. Lois tucks that information away into her mental personnel file. Mickey Smith: cannier than he may first appear. He and Gwen head back out to the Millennium Centre with Rhys to begin plans for reconstruction; Lois stays behind, engrossed in Torchwood's electronic archives.
It's getting dark outside when she comes to a folder simply entitled Tourist Office. She blinks at it for a moment before remembering -- that's right, the old Hub supposedly used a little tourist office as one of its entrances. And as its front to the public, from what Gwen told her. Which means, presumably, that someone had been there to run the office itself, at least part of the time.
It doesn't matter anymore, but her head's spinning a little from all the alien stuff in the thousand other folders, and some mundane bits and bobs about a perfectly ordinary shop might make for a nice, quick diversion, a good way to wind down toward her dinner break.
The documents within the folder are just as dull and everyday as she could hope. A few expense calendars, maintenance files, inventory spreadsheets -- the only thing remarkable about it is how resoundingly unremarkable it is. Doesn't feel like Torchwood at all, to be honest. She absently opens up a file that caught her attention by virtue of not quite making sense -- usersmanual.doc. User's manual? To the little shop?
It isn't.
The Care and Feeding of Torchwood Three
Courtesy of Ianto Jones
If you're reading this, it means you're Torchwood Three's newest butler/guard dog/teaboy (or girl, we don't discriminate here at Torchwood). Congratulations! You're in for a real challenge.
It also means one of two things -- either I've been promoted, in which case bully for me, and I'll be deleting this paragraph anyway so it makes no difference; or I'm not here anymore. Let's assume the latter, shall we?
First off, don't worry about it. Seriously. You'll understand once you've been here a while. If it's too much for you, we'll let you out, and you won't have any bad memories. And if you decide to stick it out, it means you've already made the same decision I did. It's worth it. I promise you, it's worth it. I'm just sorry I didn't have the chance to train you in person, because if you were chosen for this team, you must be wonderful, brilliant, and probably very attractive.
Lois pushes her chair back away from the desk, blinking rapidly. Oh, God. Ianto Jones -- the one who died, the quiet man who so expertly faded into the background. If Captain Harkness is Torchwood's elephant in the room -- larger than life, immortal, and as noticeable by his absence as his presence -- then Ianto is the elephant's shadow, dark and silent and hardly more than empty space. The ghost lurking in Gwen's eyes.
Lois's predecessor.
She reads on, hand pressed to her throat. Ianto had been thorough -- from archive maintenance to pterodactyl feedings, Gwen' favorite takeaway place to how to dismantle and clean the Big Gun. He'd loved this job, this place, these people; it shines through in every instruction, every sarcastic aside. And Captain Harkness, most of all. Lois hadn't known that they were lovers; now she wonders how on earth she'd missed it. It's there in every line.
Jack likes his coffee dark and strong. Yes, like he likes his women. And men. And otherwise gendered biological entities. He only makes this joke every other week. It helps to have a witty comeback prepared, but really, there's only so much you can do.
And then, almost as an afterthought--
Be there for him, if I'm not.