"What the hell are you doing?"
Suzie's voice took Ianto by surprise. He looked up and stepped back from her work station. By the look on her face she didn't really need to ask the question. On his fourth visit to Cardiff Ianto was under pressure and knew he had to find something better than the loose rambling information that he had brought back previously, along with the files Jack allowed him to have.
So consequently, when the others had been pulled out of the hub on an emergency, he had rummaged through Jack's desk and then gone to Suzie's, and started to download the initial information she had on the glove.
And since she didn't really need to ask the question, the next thing she did was pull a gun out of her bag. Ianto's eyes widened and he raised his hands automatically. Suzie's eyes narrowed and Ianto quailed, thinking she was just going to shoot him then and there.
For a moment he didn't say anything, he didn't think he was capable of forming words and what the hell could he say anyway? He had been caught red-handed. Still, like anyone in the situation, Ianto of course naturally tried.
"Jack… said… while he was out…"
He had gone out with Owen and Toshiko. Suzie wasn't supposed to be in today, but like Ianto she had another agenda and it did not help the situation that the upstart from Torchwood 1 had ruined that. Suzie stepped forward and Ianto back-peddled away from her desk. She reached up and angrily grabbed the memory stick he was downloading information into. She yanked on it hard and pulled the lead out of the computer breaking the connection.
"I very much doubt he said you could start helping yourself to all our data, especially not mine!"
Ianto said nothing. There wasn't an answer to that. She was absolutely right and there was nothing he could say. All he could do was fix his eyes on the gun pointed very steadily in his direction and wait. Suzie took another few steps forward, Ianto retreated again.
"Down the stairs!" Suzie commanded indicating with the gun. Ianto glanced behind him to the flight of stairs that led into the lower areas of Torchwood 3. He glanced back up at her. "Move!" she bellowed at him, stalking forward again.
"Okay, okay." Ianto did as he was told, too shocked, or frightened, to do anything else.
He allowed Suzie to herd him down to the vaults, into one of the sections that contained the cells. The weevil in the nearest cell lunged forward as they passed, growling and snarling at them. Ianto flinched but Suzie paid no attention whatsoever, her eyes stayed fixed on Ianto. She forced him a little further down the corridor and put out her left hand to open the cell next door, which was empty. She flicked the gun to her left.
"In," she ordered. Ianto obeyed, almost stumbling in his haste to do as he was told. He turned and watched as she closed the door again. She lowered the gun and automatically Ianto lowered his hands. He was completely trapped now. Suzie looked him up and down for a minute, Ianto looked back, wide-eyed and with a cold sensation of dread gnawing away at his insides.
"Jack can deal with you," she said. Then she spun on her heel and was gone.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Jack returned to the hub after Suzie's call to find a one woman lynch mob ready for action. He knew she'd be angry when she found out what was going on but he didn't quite expect this.
"Okay, okay, calm down!" he announced as he got everyone into the conference room. Well, nearly everyone. He glanced to the screen on his right, it was tuned into the camera in Ianto's cell. The young man was sat on the sleeping platform, his feet drawn up and knees tucked tightly to his chest, with his head down, hands laced through his hair.
Jack felt sorry for him. He knew this was bound to happen at some point. But Ianto was going to have to stew for a while, so he could deal with the three irate people in front of him.
"Calm down! God knows what he's told them!" Owen snapped. He hadn't liked it from the minute Ianto had arrived. True he made good coffee, much better than the rest of them could ever produce, but that was hardly the be all and end all of the situation.
"He hasn't had that much information, which is probably why he was acting now. He's not had a chance prior to this and I dare say Yvonne's upped the pressure on him to produce something pertinent."
"Like what?" Suzie leant forward slamming her hands down on the desk. Out of the corner of her eye Jack saw Toshiko jump at the gesture and the sudden noise. She had been quiet throughout the discussion, looking shocked and a little hurt. She was generally quieter than his other two team members. Jack would have liked some input from her but under the storm of rage from Owen and Suzie, she would never make herself heard.
"Jack?" Owen pushed, as Jack remained silent for a moment. He looked up at them all; it wasn't fair to keep them in the dark. It hadn't been fair from the start but as Jack had taken in the information from Torchwood 1, the disappearance of the spatial disturbance, the entire reason they had built the tower in the first place, he had worried. There was still that feeling, being close to the rift it bled into him, an almost metallic tang to the air. It was not meant to have done that. Jack suspected the anomaly had somehow imploded, but what remained of the energy, told him it shouldn't have done.
Eventually Jack looked at Suzie. He spread out the information that Ianto had hurriedly compiled in their absence, with several things to do with him personally, and sighed heavily.
"You remember when I told you I'd know what they really wanted by who they sent?"
"Yes, of course," Suzie frowned.
"So!" Owen snapped.
"They've reopened Project 345," Jack said. Owen glared at him and waved a hand impatiently, ordering him to continue.
"So what's project 345?" Toshiko asked in a low tone, breaking the silence, while Jack still debated whether or not he should really tell them.
"I am."
"What?!" Suzie bellowed. She lurched up almost looking like she was about to stalk from the room and go and deal with Ianto then and there. That was exactly what Jack didn't want. He knew how to play the game when it came to Torchwood's methods of getting information on him. Now they wanted some because they knew he was the possible only link to The Doctor.
"Just stop it!" Jack said equally loudly. "Sit down!"
Suzie did, her jaw set. Sometimes she could be obsessively over-protective of him. Most of the time Jack found it amusing, but not today.
"How long have they been doing that?" Owen said. "I mean we know you're not…" Owen hit a brick wall. It was clear, the way that Jack sometimes spoke, that there was more to him than met the eye. A hell of a lot more but he often didn't tell. You were left putting a jigsaw puzzle together where the pieces didn't fit.
"On and off for a long while. Since I broke links with them and assembled you lot as my team there hadn't been anything for the last few years. But with what happened I guess they thought it was time to start it up again."
"So they send you a pretty young thing they hope you will be indiscreet with?" Suzie said.
"Exactly and trust me, they do a hell of a lot of psychological evaluation beforehand."
"What they just keep sending over people from Torchwood 1?"
"Not like this. Beforehand, while we were under London's jurisdiction they would send an employee full time, who would just report back on what was going on. No one else was aware of it, not in the team, not even the team leader."
"You didn't always lead here?" Toshiko asked in surprise.
"No, after…" Jack paused. He didn't want to talk about that. Plus he thought it was a little irrelevant. "After I took over, I severed all links with them. They can't force me to take on any new team members; this was the only way they could do it."
"If they used to send people that presumably used to seduce you, or they let you seduce them, why would they send someone with a girlfriend?" Toshiko asked. Jack looked down at the information on the desk. He had his own theory on that, but it wasn't one he was about to share with them, not just yet anyway.
"Maybe they thought I would be less discreet with someone who was more of a challenge, maybe they don't want it going as far as that this time." Jack shrugged. "Who knows? Ianto won't. They won't give him any of the reasons for what he is doing; they'll have simply given him enough instruction to do as he was told. The main part of that will be if I have made contact with a friend."
"Which friend?" Suzie demanded.
"Just a friend," Jack said. "The main point of here and now is that neither Ianto nor Torchwood 1 is a threat. I can control this." He emphasized the 'I'. It was down to him.
"So we are just going to allow him to wander around the hub?" Suzie looked less than impressed at that idea.
"No, we are not," Jack said firmly. "The first thing we need to do is…"
XxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Ianto watched the second hand of his watch tick round up. That took it to six o'clock exactly. Suzie had put him down here a little before eleven that morning, so he had sat here for almost seven hours, an entire day. For a while he had wondered if they had forgot him but the blinking light on the camera told him that he was being monitored.
He hadn't moved much. He hadn't dared, fearful of what they were watching for. But at one stage he was forced to relieve himself down the drain in the corner. It was fine, they couldn't really see anything and perhaps if Ianto had asked they could have taken him to the main bathroom but he didn't dare. By the time he really needed to go, he couldn't have managed to go that far anyway.
For the rest of the time he just sat still, on the sleeping platform, curled up, thinking through what could happen and getting to the stage where he was thinking the worse.
He didn't really understand the rules of Torchwood 3 but he had read Jack's entire file. This wouldn't be taken lightly by him; and if Jack reported Ianto's failure to Torchwood 1 would it be taken kindly by them. Ianto was firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place. And there was possibly a good chance that he wouldn't leave Cardiff.
It wasn't often spoken about but Torchwood, as he knew it, had it's rules. A firing squad wasn't that much far from the imagination into reality when it came to them.
He should have not accepted this job. He should have just taken his lot in life as a lowly researcher and then left the company in a few years. There were other government places that would take Torchwood employees. They sanctioned it often enough. It was just Lisa and the car they wanted to buy and saving for a house that had swung him.
It had looked so easy. But it never was. He should have known that.
A blur caught his vision and he started violently. There had been no warning of footsteps. Jack just appeared before him.
"Jesus!" Ianto yelped. He jumped and his feet slid off the platform, slamming down hard on the floor. As he gasped for breath he looked up at Jack and put his hand up to his face, trying to regulate his breathing. Jack smiled as he watched Ianto's reaction. It did nothing to soothe the young man.
"Sorry," Jack said. He didn't sound it but Ianto managed a semblance of a smile. Ianto looked away from him, staring down at his own feet. He flinched as Jack pressed in the combination to open the cell door. Behind him the weevil growled and yelped, snuffling up and down the wall as if it could scent out the fear from the room beyond. Jack ignored it, he threw down the information he was holding. It landed next to Ianto, who flinched. Ianto glanced at the brown file with the Torchwood logo embossed across it, and the two memory sticks. Ianto's guilt surged up within him and he looked away going back down to his feet.
Jack crossed his arms over his chest and gazed down at him. He could well imagine what was going through Ianto's mind. As much as Yvonne Hartman pronounced Torchwood to be a modern organisation it could have very medieval methods when it came to dealing with threats. It was one reason that Jack severed links; he had been taught better.
For a moment he didn't fill the uncomfortable silence, he just watched Ianto squirm, but Jack knew Ianto wouldn't say anything first. He was at a stage now that he would just wait to see what happened. So Jack put him out of his misery.
"I've re-written some of it for you," Jack said, his voice pleasant enough but the hard edge was there. Ianto looked up blinking in shock, and then he glanced at the file, the file that had been in his hotel room safe. They had gone to search his belongings. He looked at Jack, who was staring down at him, not unkindly.
"What?" Shock made his brain a little slow. Jack raised his eyebrows and shifted his weight slightly.
"I've re-written and edited the information you took. You had better read it before you hand it to Yvonne."
Tentatively, his eyes still half on Jack, Ianto reached for the file. He pushed the memory sticks off the top and opened it. He flicked through the first few pages, flinching as he caught sight of a photocopied page of Jack's diary. He hadn't really bothered to read it; Ianto had just spotted a few pertinent phrases and thought it might be useful. He looked back up at Jack.
"But…" Ianto's blue eyes widened as he started to realise exactly what was happening. He didn't know if he was horrified or embarrassed. Jack smiled, his eyes softening slightly.
"I told Suzie months ago that I'd know what Torchwood was really up to by who they'd send."
Embarrassment won the internal battle and Ianto's face flushed, his cheeks burning. He looked down again trying to fight the tears prickling behind his eyes. He didn't dare blink in case one dropped out, down onto the sheets of paper that he was looking at.
"I've removed everything you downloaded on the glove. I sure as hell do not want them knowing about that, clear?"
Ianto glanced up again and nodded, "yes, Sir."
"But I put in a little more data about the rift machine. It will probably keep Yvonne happy and you can keep all the information you got on me, I can't see any harm in that. I mean, that's probably what they want anyway, isn't it?"
Dumbly Ianto nodded. He put the file aside on the bench and looked up at Jack again.
"So you knew and you just let it happen?"
Ianto pressed himself back as Jack leant forward. Jack placed his hands on the wall either side of Ianto's head and leant down bringing his eyes level with Ianto's, their faces a centimetre or so apart. Ianto pushed back hard against the unyielding wall and on the other side the weevil snuffled and snarled.
"Do not, for one second, believe that letting you in here makes me an idiot. In fact I think you'll find it's the complete opposite and I don't doubt that you've read enough of my file to know that." Jack paused. "I know full well that whatever has gone on has Torchwood 1 chasing its own tail and I know they're desperate to find answers. The only part that baffles me is them sending someone who is completely unqualified for this job and considering the amount of psyche tests they put you through before even giving you a hint of what the project is, makes me think my theory is a little more valid than theirs. But that's something I am not about to tell them."
Ianto stayed pinned to the wall by the icy blue eyes and the sheer rage coming off Jack, spreading out into the room. On the other side of the wall the weevil had stepped up to growling. Ianto watched Jack's eyes flicker up slightly staring at something that he couldn't possibly see. The weevil's growls stopped and Ianto heard it move back away from the wall, across to the other side of the cell.
Jack looked back down at Ianto. His eyes were wide and very damp. He was chewing on his lower lip with nerves, not daring to move, although probably wanting to. Jack knew he'd pushed him to the very brink of tears, and he also knew it wasn't fair, not on Ianto. Jack was right, he was not qualified for this job and the tests should have flagged it up. That made Jack wonder if he was interpreting it all wrong. But there was no one else to direct his anger at, so Ianto was just going to have to take it.
Still, either way, Jack knew when he had done enough. He pulled back and stood up moving to the cell door, pausing to look at Ianto, who had stayed exactly where he was.
"Come on," Jack said. "Don't forget those." He added as Ianto almost forgot the files. Turning back he scrabbled them up, hugging the file to his chest, Jack backed into the corridor and Ianto obediently tailed him.
"Where are we going?" Ianto asked his voice low and subdued. He glanced at the weevil; it was huddled in the corner making low crooning noises, ducking its head down as Jack passed by.
Jack paused in the doorway to the vaults and looked at him.
"I'm taking you for a drink; now come on."
The walk though the hub was far worse then Jack's behaviour in the cell. Suzie glared at him and stormed away, Owen after one glance ducked into the autopsy room. Toshiko, although she didn't make a dramatic exit from the room stayed very interested in what she was doing on the computer. For a fraction of a second it looked like she was going to glance in his direction but at the last moment she stopped herself, instead staring down at her keyboard as she typed.
Ianto hesitated by the stairs. Jack either didn't notice or didn't care about his staff's behaviour. He strode across the hub towards the door. It had been slightly tempting to take Ianto out via the lift but that was nothing short of petty, so Jack turned and waited as Ianto scurried across the room and tailed Jack through the door and out of the hub.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Forty-five minutes later Ianto sat opposite Jack in a small Italian restaurant. Between them on the table lay a lasagne, which Ianto had ordered; so driven into miserable passivity he hadn't felt able to read the menu, but it was a safe enough guess that lasagne would be on there. Also there was a plate of garlic bread and Jack was making his way through a huge plate of spaghetti bolognaise. There was also a bottle of wine. Ianto had drunk his way almost through one glass, Jack, he noticed, had ordered a glass of water.
Ianto thought that somewhat obscure but he had drunk the first glass of wine quickly, enjoying and rather needing the numbing affect of the alcohol. Jack clearly didn't feel the same.
Before they had ordered Jack had asked for the candle to be taken off the table.
"Very pretty but intolerably impractical. I always worry I'm going to knock it over," he had said to Ianto, who hadn't really responded. And that had been the extent of the conversation as they waited for their food.
"Are you going to eat that?" Jack asked now, through a mouthful of garlic bread. Ianto had stirred his lasagne about with a fork and he had taken a few small mouthfuls but his stomach contracted painfully every time he swallowed.
"I'm not very hungry."
"Ianto," Jack said reproachfully. Ianto glanced up at him. "You've been down in the vaults all day with nothing to eat or drink, speaking of which," Jack picked up the bottle and poured Ianto another glass, filling it almost to the brim. "And we are not leaving until you've eaten it."
With that threat Ianto got another forkful and ate it. Again he felt the painful, miserable constriction but he forced himself to swallow it. His stomach eased a little. Jack reached for another slice of garlic bread and frowned as he realised he had eaten two thirds of it. Very carefully he picked up two pieces and leaning forward tucked them onto the plate that held Ianto's steaming bowl of lasagne. That gentle, caring gesture brought Ianto to the edge of tears again. To cover it up he took a swallow of wine and picked up one of the pieces, dipping it into the lasagne's tomato sauce.
"Thanks."
"You don't need to feel as bad as all that," Jack said. Ianto glanced up at him and Jack smiled.
"I know but, you're right, I'm not qualified for this, I don't even know why I got chosen for it."
"You could have said no if you had reservations," Jack pointed out.
"Yeah, but they kind of state it in a way that makes you think that refusing is… not something that's done, at least if you ever want a promotion to come up again. Plus Lisa was talking about us getting a car and saving up for a deposit on a house and the money was so much better…." Ianto paused and glanced up ruefully. At least eating gave him something to do in the more awkward moments; as did drinking, his head was starting to swim slightly, but his body had relaxed.
"Sorry," Ianto added. "That's hardly good justification for spying on someone."
Jack shrugged, continuing to plough through the steaming pile of spaghetti. "It's better than some of the reasons I've heard."
"Plus, you sounded more than a little interesting."
That made Jack pause and raise his eyebrows, giving a very cheeky grin. "Of course, I'm irresistible. How much did you read of my file?"
"All of it," Ianto said without hesitation, however he watched Jack's grin fade, the light going out of his eyes.
"Really?"
"I think so… from before the turn of the 20th century almost to the millennium."
And that was when Alex had killed everyone in the hub, including the Torchwood 1 informant who Jack had successfully seduced and rather liked. It was one reason for severing links. If people were going to be put in danger they were going to be people who recognised it. It was one reason he was upset and angry about Ianto getting this job.
"Jack?" Ianto asked tentatively watching the conflicting emotions pass over his face. Jack shook his head and reached for the last piece of garlic bread with one hand and twirled spaghetti around his fork with the other.
"Sorry. Really? The whole lot?"
"I think so, there wasn't any indication that anything had been removed, not like the sub-files I read." Ianto didn't want to lie, he guessed now that honesty was really his only policy. Although he hadn't really, technically lied about anything but saying that was nothing more than nit-picking.
Jack nodded slowly. "So you're aware of… you know, my little quirk."
Ianto nodded back, "you can't die, or rather you can die but come back. The longest recorded death was seven minutes sixteen seconds, of the ones that Torchwood is aware of."
He watched Jack shudder at that. The experiments they had conducted around that had not been pleasant.
"Sorry," Ianto said, realising he probably shouldn't have brought that up. Jack shook his head.
"Don't worry about that… just…" he paused and stared at Ianto seriously. "The others don't know, I don't have any intention of telling them, unless I have to of course."
"If you die?"
Jack nodded. "It's not an easy thing to mention. True they can guess some things about me and they know I'm not quite normal but…. I don't generally as a rule tell people. That's been taken out of my hands this time."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, and you're meant to be eating," Jack said. Ianto obediently ate a few more mouthfuls of lasagne. The tension had eased however. The silence no longer seemed as heavy. It now felt like a case of they didn't need to talk to each other rather than them not having anything to say.
Jack watched Ianto for a moment. He'd settled down, true he was likely to end up very drunk if he drank the entire bottle of wine but Jack didn't think that would hurt him too much. Now Jack could dismiss a large amount of Ianto's nerves during his visits, and Jack guessed Torchwood 1 was getting desperate. They had invested a lot in their research, and there was still something going on at the top of that tower, even if it was currently nothing.
It wouldn't hurt for the time being to let them think that Jack knew something, and that it could be found out by Ianto. He could play that game, Ianto couldn't, not without guidance, but Jack felt ready to give it. All he had to go on this time was senses, and feelings, what he felt of the rift, of what he knew of the way the universe worked. It was somehow moving to compensate and the more Jack thought about it the more Jack thought about the pieces shifting around him. One of them being Ianto.
He wasn't ready for it yet. Ianto really wasn't. Jack had to do something to help him, which meant keeping him around for a while longer. Plus of the last few Project 345 runners, Ianto was most definitely the most pliable. That couldn't hurt.
"Come on," Jack said pouring him another glass of wine, emptying the bottle. Ianto blinked.
"Jack, I'm already a bit drunk."
"We'll have coffee before we leave, and I'll walk you home."
Jack insisted on taking him all the way up to his hotel room. Ianto fumbled with the key card and Jack ended up helping him out opening the door and propping it open. They hadn't talked further about the incident that day. In fact Jack had ended up distracting Ianto with a very daft story about a sonic resonator, a Rassilian and a prostitute. It was one of Jack's favourite tall tales and Ianto had eaten the rest of the lasagne, another garlic bread and drunk a coffee without even thinking about it.
As much as Jack was aware that he sounded inane at times, it always had a very good reason. By the walk home, which actually did nothing for Ianto's sobriety, the young man was relaxed and happy. Until it came for the moment to part.
"You okay now?" Jack asked.
"Jack, I'm really sorry, really sorry, I didn't want…"
Ianto stopped as Jack reached up and very gently brushed his knuckles against Ianto's cheek. Ianto blinked as Jack smiled at him and leant forward. For a second Ianto tensed, unsure of what would happen next and really too drunk to make his body react in any way, either to fight him off or allow him.
Jack leant up and kissed Ianto on the forehead. Ianto felt Jack's lips linger against his skin, his cheek tingling from his gentle touch of his hand. He wasn't angry with him for what he had done. That was the most important thing, Ianto thought. He closed his eyes and then opened them as Jack pulled back and smiled at him.
"Don't tell Yvonne about today okay, just give her the information, and make sure you're aware of what's in it. See if you can find out what she really wants to know, I can probably give her enough to keep her off your back."
Ianto bit his lip, his blinked and wavered on his feet a little. Exhaustion was catching up on him.
"And I'll see you soon." Jack gave him one last gentle touch on the cheek and then turned around and walked a few steps away before turning and grinning at Ianto.
"Sleep in tomorrow, you're gonna have one hell of a headache in the morning."
With that he was gone.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Ianto hadn't taken an earlier train; he was still in the hotel, he hadn't checked out as yet. Jack typed carefully, hacking into the programme linked to the information he had given Ianto, which he was studying on his lap top, probably not even dressed yet. Jack smirked at that thought, perhaps he'd not even bothered getting out of his clothes last night.
Jack pulled his face and mind together. Lustful thoughts about the Torchwood 1 Liaison Officer were probably not appropriate at that moment in time.
He had been given enough hints so Ianto wouldn't appear for his final morning. Jack didn't think the rest of the team would allow that. They came in, moping around the hub but not as yet coming into his office.
Suzie, when she arrived, broke the impasse.
"So?" she demanded walking straight into his office.
"It's fine, it's sorted. He's reading the information now, and it would appear," Jack tapped a few keys on the keyboard. "… also doing some editing."
"What!" Suzie roared, leaning forward on his desk to try and look at the screen. "What the fuck is he doing?!"
Jack watched the screen for a few moments aware that Tosh and Owen had come in behind Suzie.
"I think in this era it's known as dumbing down," Jack said.
"What?" Toshiko said, she moved forward and walked around Jack so she could look at the screen.
"He's re-writing some of the technical data, mainly yours," Jack said to address the person looking over his shoulder, Toshiko, who had written it all the previous day.
Owen sipped his coffee and moved to the space invaders machine set to the side of Jack's office. The beat and whir of the game worked in the background. It was a form of protest, Owen was fed up, Owen didn't care anymore; ergo he wasn't about to get involved.
Suzie glowered at Jack over his desk, but she still glanced at the machine.
"And he's rearranging some of your perfectly put together sentences to how he'd write them," he added to Suzie.
"You mean he's…"
"Making it more realistic."
"Do we stop him?" Toshiko asked. Jack looked away from the screen and looked up at her and then to his second-in-command, who snorted and rolled her eyes.
"No we don't. If he's doing that then he's well prepared to take it back to them, which means they are going to think he's well on the way to gaining our trust, when in actual fact, we are just feeding the information we want to give."
"So, you're keeping him then?" Suzie snapped.
"Yeah, I think we'll keep the very pretty Mr Jones around for a while," Jack grinned. "Are you trying to tell me he's not nice to look at?"
Suzie smiled and rolled her eyes, "one sign again and I will shoot him. I'm not going to trust him Jack, he sees nothing of mine without my permission."
"Heaven forbid Suzie!" Jack said dramatically. Suzie stared at him steadily. "Don't worry, when it comes to my phone call to Ms Hartman I will pass on a message that will keep our new little friend under control. Now if I remember rightly…" he paused and looked around at his team.
"Work to do."