One
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. ~Ernest Hemingway
It's been a relatively uneventful day at the Hub, which usually means the next will run them into the ground. Gwen and Owen have left early, and Ianto certainly doesn't want to think about what they'll be up to with their unexpected free time. Jack and Tosh have gone to pick up some dinner, because Jack doesn't want to leave Tosh alone after what happened with Mary-or rather, after Ianto pointed out several times that maybe Jack should think about offering her more than extra work as emotional support so she doesn't end up like Ianto and bottle everything up inside until she explodes.
It's been a week since Mary revealed her true nature and Jack killed her, and Tosh has been quiet all day. She seems to be doing better, but Ianto knows how hard it is to lose someone you care about, even if they do turn out to be a deadly evil alien. Ianto had intended to check on her himself and see if she wanted to get dinner or see a movie, but Jack beat him to it; to Ianto's surprise, Jack's invited him along. He rather morbidly feels like it's the first meeting of the Jack Harkness Survivor's Club.
Ianto is glad to be joining them, because he doesn't particularly enjoy early nights home alone anymore. Though it's been several months since Lisa died and he's made his peace with her death at Canary Wharf (he's working on what happened at the Hub,) he still has moments where he misses her so much he feels sick, and most of those moments happen when he is alone in his cold, dark flat. Where he once had a local and could lose himself in the bottom of a pint, those days are clearly over. All he has is Torchwood. At least at work he has a never-ending list of things to do on top of unexpected Rift spikes and alien incursions, as well as a few people he might consider friends one day.
And then there's Jack.
Ianto leans on the railing outside the tourist office and stares out across the dark water. He's come outside to wait for Jack and Tosh, but more than that he needs some fresh air after being cooped up inside all day trying to make sense of the 'unknown device of alien origin' section of the archives. Though it's cloudy and cool, he pulls his pea coat close and enjoys the rare opportunity for quiet contemplation, his thoughts inevitably turning to Jack and where exactly things stand between them.
It's been a long week since the fiasco at The Ferret. The Savior is dead, Mandy is long gone (he's checking up on her to make sure), and no more Radyr residents have gone missing. Ianto went back to the pub once, first thing the next morning, to clean up another Torchwood mess. He'd been surprised when Jack had trusted him to do it alone, but then it had required little more than clearing out the tech in the basement and altering some records for Mandy, both things he was well experienced with. It had been hard, returning to the scene of another crime, another failure. It would have been so easy to reset the Savior's machine and vanish into the Rift, taking his chances on a new life, but he'd resisted the temptation. He had people who needed him here, and a job to do that sometimes, occasionally made a difference. Maybe it was why Jack had let him go, to test him. Ianto had passed, and it was definitely the last time he would ever set foot in The Ferret; he doesn't miss it.
He had tried to kill his boss there. He had yelled at Jack, cursed him and hit him, and finally watched as he was thrown through the Rift, knowing exactly what would happen on the other side. Ianto sometimes wonders if he temporarily lost his sanity that night, but deep down he knows there is no excuse. He'd sworn to see Jack dead, and when he'd had his chance, he'd followed through with it. Always one to keep his word, he had kept it in the worst way possible.
Of course, he'd gone back for Jack and saved him, destroying the Savior and ultimately saving the day for any more troubled residents of the area looking for a way to start over. Problem was, not a damn person knew it except for Jack, but that was Torchwood: anonymously saving the world for over a hundred years. He's fairly sure he's convinced Jack that there's more to him than coffee and filing now. More importantly, Jack has forgiven him for what happened with the Savior. The man seems to have an unlimited capacity for forgiveness; Ianto idly wonders if Jack falls into bed with everyone he forgives so quickly.
At the very least Jack could have fired Ianto, Retconned him, even executed him for what happened with Lisa. Yet in spite of Ianto sentencing him to slavery on an alien world, Jack still forgave him, kissed him, went to bed with him. He's been completely normal since then, never mentioning his unexpected trip through the Rift or what happened after. Their working relationship has, for the most part, gone back to what it was like before Lisa was discovered, only Ianto is trying to be a more active part of the team and speak up for himself, and he feels like Jack is watching out for him, trying to include him more, even asking how he's doing and inviting him to dinner.
They'd agreed that night was one-time only, two broken people seeking comfort together. They'd both done each other wrong and it seemed as good a way as any to move past it. Yet Ianto feels the attraction between them growing stronger each day. They talk more and share meals and even flirt and joke like they used to, when Ianto had first come to the Hub. He'd always enjoyed it, but had set it aside back then as a necessary and impossible thing, something he did to keep Lisa safe and, to some degree, keep himself sane. Now Lisa is gone, and Ianto can't deny how much he thinks about Jack in ways he probably shouldn't given their sordid history. He doesn't want to resist anymore, he wants to know what Jack looks like and feels like and tastes like again. But Jack's his boss, and Ianto is just a glorified secretary with a gun, and PAs don't proposition their bosses again after agreeing not to start any sort of illicit office affair.
He's trying not to think about the possibilities when there's a strange crackling sound behind him, like a fire spitting out electricity. When he turns that's exactly what he sees, only it's hanging in mid-air, a large vortex of blazing white energy shooting sparks of lighting into the night. He can feel the tingling on his skin and swears as he reaches up to touch his earpiece and notify Jack. Of course there's a Rift event while he's enjoying a quiet moment to think, and of course it happens while everyone else is out.
He can handle it. After all, he's actually traveled through the Rift and survived. But it grows quickly and envelops him in its warm embrace, so that he doesn't hear Jack shouting through his earpiece because he can't feel anything, see anything, hear anything. He is nothing and everything as the white light surrounds him, and all he can think is Not again.
Author's Note
This story was inspired by the audio drama Broken. If you haven't listened to it, go to Big Finish and do so immediately, it's wonderful! The idea actually came to me before it come out, as I was reading the synopsis. I wrote the first two scenes before it was released, and then realized that my idea would fit perfectly into the new canon of the story. I didn't even have to change the timing, as this was always set just after Greeks Bearing Gifts! But what I quickly saw was that this story could take things from the end of Broken to the end of They Keep Killing Suzie. Because for every beautiful new bit of information we learn in Broken, there are still questions, new questions. No longer, "How in the world did they go from Cyberwoman to sleeping together?" it's now, "How did they go from one night together to pick up lines with a stopwatch?" This is how. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the story! Please let a writer know what you think: comments keep our blood flowing some days, especially when we have our doubts.