Title: We're Two, Alone
Pairing: Jack/Ianto past Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Spoilers: Alternative post S1 End of Days episode. Vague spoilers for rest of S1, will remain AU from now.
Summary: After Jack goes with the Doctor, Ianto decides there is nothing to keep him from fulfilling his own search for truth. And so he gets in touch with his own, alien, roots and begins the task of discovering who - or what - destroyed the rest of his species.
Author's note: 'cause I love Special!Ianto, and because I've just watched S1 ep End of Days & really didn't like it. Also, I had a bit of a plot bunny pop up during the Captain Jack Harkness episode and I really wanted to give it a shot. Bear with me though please, this is my first attempt at fanfic in years - my first attempt at Torchwood fanfic ever - and it's unbetaed! :s
We're Two, Alone – Chapter OneThe cardboard coffee holder weighed down Ianto's hand. Gone. Jack had gone. First he'd died on him - twice in one day! - and he'd only just come back to them. Only to go again.
Gwen started yelling, uselessly, "JACK!! JACK!! Where are you?!"
Her welsh accent made the call even more plaintive and Ianto looked down at the coffee he was still holding. Two cups left. One for Jack and one for Gwen. The one time he himself hadn't fancied a drink and now it looked like neither of them was going to be drunk anyway.
Tosh's cup hit the ground, its contents spilling out across the hub floor, as she raised her hands to her mouth, a dull "no, no, no" issuing from her lips as she shook her head in denial. Owen, ironically, was the first to leap into action. Recovering from his own stunned stillness to rush across to the hub monitors and begin frantically checking the cctv.
"Tosh, c'mon, where's the bloody-! Oh, there, there, look!"
Gwen stopped her wailing, tears drying eerily fast as she whirled around to view the footage Owen had brought up on screen. Tosh's eyes cautiously peeked out above her hands, and Ianto himself found it impossible to look away as a blue police box shimmered into being on screen. "But how...?" Gwen whispered, cutting off her own astonishment in mid sentence. After the week they'd just had it hardly seemed the time to bother with surprise at the things they witnessed.
Recognising the TARDIS - for of course, what a perfect end to the perfect week! - from Torchwood One's reports, Ianto didn't bother watching or listening as Tosh shook free of her malaise in order to join Owen at the console to begin a frantic search of the database.
He could tell them, save them some time, but some vague part of him noted that it was nice to see them acting with purpose again. That same need for some sort of purpose had been what prompted the coffee run as well. Starbucks was good for some occasions, but Ianto's coffee was infinitely better and it would have been easier to use their own coffee machine. After the miracle of Jack finally reviving had worn off a bit though, the memory of recent events and their accompanying insipid guilt had slunk back into the room. Owen had been the one to suggest coffee, "to perk everyone up" - eager for a chance to escape the hub for a while, and to have some physical peace offering he could offer their leader. No, far better to give them something to do. With that thought in mind Ianto turned and made his way to their kitchen area. The now-unnecessary coffee was poured down the sink - such a waste, he thought - the cups thrown in the trash, and some paper towels and a can of steel cleaner grabbed up.
Returning to the central hub again he saw that Gwen had pulled up a board from her desk area and started compiling the facts they had of Jack's 'disappearance'. Date, time, location, strange blue box that could appear and disappear from thin air... Squatting low Ianto mopped up the excess coffee from the floor, stuffing the damp towels into the takeaway cup, and then gave the floor a judicious squirt of the cleaner. There, that was better.
None of the others paid him any attention, as usual, and for once Ianto didn't feel a faint pang of loneliness.
Maybe it was finally time. Time to go home.
At least one good thing had come from all this - from the panic of Tosh and Jack disappearing through the rift, from the anger and frustration of trying to deal with a loose-canon Owen; too strung up on the abandonment of his lover to recognise a fool's choice for what it to was, to all remembered pain and suffering dredged up anew over the past few days. How succinctly Jack had called them all on it, summarised their weak points with the precision of a marksman. Tosh's need to be needed, Owen's need to feel, Gwen's need to have a normal life even as she did everything she could to have something more. And of course, there was Ianto's ever-present need for Lisa.
With all that though, the good thing - the only thing that could provide any solace - was something which Owen had revealed to Ianto. Even as he'd cautioned Owen not to tamper with the Rift, not to push those boundaries, he'd been eagerly hovering at his shoulder to see the outcome. Eagerly watching as the man rifled through the secret contents of Jack's safe. Sharp eyes noting the location of Jack's password book, keeping track of Owen's hands as they hastily entered the password and cracked it open, and of course observing with fevered intensity the contents of the safe as Owen carelessly ploughed through them.
He'd seen it then. The device which had first drawn himself and Lisa to Torchwood. The instrument of their downfall.
It was quite small, black and made from a material which looked like plastic but was actually an advanced form of silicone. With its short cylindrical shape and the slight curve to it it looked like a cross between a plastic gun and some kind of remote. Such a simple device, and yet it had caused Ianto so much pain.
When he and Lisa had first arrived on this small planet they had been terrified, running for their lives from the destruction, no, annihilation of their species. They hadn't thought about the reaction their appearance on this backwards world might provoke. Hadn't realised this civilisation wasn't advanced enough to realise they meant no harm - had come for sanctuary.
At the beginning Ianto had joked that it was a good thing they had been discovered by a Torchwood employee. The man had yelled in fear and shot at them, sure. But he had done so with this plastic-looking device. An alien technology newly discovered and en route to Torchwood One for further study. It's a strange fate that finds a new Torchwood recruit in possession of a powerful alien device, and that makes him the sole witness for the arrival of two traumatised alien beings. Still, this fate had the new recruit automatically treating the artefact as though it were a gun, and firing at the aliens. And so he and Lisa had been bound to human form. The Torchwood employee's DNA had been analysed by the device and it had altered their alien form into a facimile of it.
It wasn't a very good joke admittedly, but the fact that one who would have been bound to capture them for study had in fact provided them with the perfect camouflage had never failed to put a smile on Lisa's beautiful human face.
Then of course the battle at Canary Wharf had happened, and it was no longer amusing in the slightest.
Ianto had wondered then if it would have been best if they had given up on their attempts to locate the device. If they had settled for being human, created a life on this planet and adopted this species as their own. The pull to regain her old form had driven his love though, and she had convinced him of the need. The rest of their species may be gone, but as long as even one of them remained alive, it was their responsibility to stop those who had hunted them, and to make sure they never did such a thing again.
And so, he had been trapped, helpless in his human body, forced to watch as his mate was trapped within an unnatural melding of flesh and metal.
Cybernetics had been a tentative hope. Ianto had been trying to prolong Lisa's life. Just long enough for him to locate the thrice damned device, and then the mangle of machine and organism that her body had become would no longer matter.
That dream had died with her though.
Placing a steadying hand on the sink Ianto realised he had managed to put away the cleaning supplies, and automatically started in on the pile of washing up that was always waiting by the sink. For a moment he was torn as to whether to continue, but he could hear the distant murmuring of the others as they started discussing the Doctor's motives in taking Jack, and he plunged his hands into the warm sudsy water.
Jack had been the one to pull Ianto from the pit of despair he had felt when Lisa died. He was the last of his kind. The shock of the realisation had more than eclipsed the grief he felt over her death; that had burned out in the initial rush of events, as he cried himself hoarse on Jack's sturdy shoulder.
In the days that followed he had been sleep-walking. Each morning the dread of reality was like a slap in the face, and then he was numb. It was only gradually that he realised Jack was watching him. Appearing at random intervals throughout the day, asking for coffee or files, and making a joke about how Ianto's arse filled out his trousers. To be looked after, even in so subtle a way...had felt nice.
It was beginning to feel more than just nice, but then this whole mess had begun. Idly rinsing out the mug he was holding, Ianto realised it said "I've had sex with an alien" - Jack's of course - and the damn coffee ring still hadn't come off. Dunking it back into the water Ianto wondered if it was a bad sign to find the stubborness off a man's coffee stains vaguely charming?
In any case, now he knew the location of the device there was no reason to stay here.
The plan had always been to get their own forms back, and then return to piece together what had happened. To search for survivors - though they held little hope that they would find any - and to get justice on the ones who had done this to them.
So what if he was alone now? So what if he had begun to feel some warmth for his fellow colleagues? He had always been careful to not make ties, ready to leave at a moments notice and feel no regret. They would barely feel the loss - even now there were no questions about where he'd got to, despite the fact that he had been slipping up and getting more involved recently; a by-product of Jack's nagging. No, they wouldn't miss him.
The last cup rinsed and stacked on the draining board, Ianto let out the plug and wiped the counter down with an efficient swipe.
There were no files to tidy away - afterall he didn't have his own desk to clutter, and tidiness had always been a natural trait of his, no matter his form.
Walking past the others he saw they had migrated to their separate desks now. Owen obsessively re-watching the hub cctv which clearly showed a grinning Jack embracing a bespectacled man before following him behind blue doors. Gwen was chewing on a pen and looking grave as she re-read the list of facts they had pulled together, and Tosh appeared to be analysing the Rift activity pattern from the times before and after Jack's disappearance.
They wouldn't be able to find him of course. Jack had been waiting for the Doctor, that much Ianto had managed to pick up in between all the flirting and the semi-serious heart to hearts they had shared. There was much he still didn't know about Jack of course, but that the man had been waiting for someone had been obvious. Coupled with Ianto's own knowledge of the Doctor, and his own fervent search for the device that held such power over himself, and he was able to match Jack's own desires and behaviour to a similar goal. At the heart of everything, there's only questions. Hopefully Jack will now have access to the answers he so desires, and - Ianto opened the door to Jack's office and crossed over to the safe - soon he will be able to go search for his own answers too.
The door swung open with a kind of grunt, and the device was exactly where Ianto remembered.
Picking it up with one trembling hand he realised there were etchings along the side. Valerrrian etchings to be precise. Made sense, the Valerrrian were known to be fond of manipulating matter, a device to change the organic composition of one thing to a different composition would be right up their alley. Fortunately, they were also known for their extremely user-friendly technology, and it was with a sense of light-headedness that Ianto pressed the combination of buttons necessary to access the history log.
A purple box lit up in the top of the remote and a visual image of DNA popped up. Valerrrian details started scrolling next to it and Ianto was able to identify it as human. Another strand of DNA popped up and he immediately recognised it as his own. Right, so just need to press-, and that-, done.
Reversing his grip on the device Ianto aimed the remote at himself, and...paused.
Turning his head to the side he took in the clutter on Jack's desk. The careless way his pistol had been left next to the pile of books he never seemed to read but always seemed to have stacked there, and the half-empty decanter of scotch which he liked to savour on an evening. Recently he had taken to offering Ianto a nightcap before sending him home.
Through the door he could just make out the concentrated business of the team. Having something to do had done wonders to pull them back together and calm them down. Seeing them at work now, Ianto was positive they would recover from losing Jack. A faint sad smile eased the tight lines of his forehead and he pressed the button.