Title: The Aftermath


Summary: An explanation as to how Ianto ended up at Torchwood 3 and why he and Jack are so close.

Rating: PG

A/N: Short one-shot. Pre Torchwood. Post Doomsday. Spoilers up to episode 4. Mild references to slash. Jack/Ianto implied.

"What's your name kid?" The young man sat huddled in the corner of one of the many offices in Torchwood Tower. He looked up at the stranger who had spoken to him. One of the clean up crew, smiling down sympathetically. He obviously hadn't been expecting survivors so close to the conversion units.

"Ianto." He finally choked out, his eyes red and puffy from crying. His shirt was dishevelled and covered in blood.

"Ianto. Welsh isn't it?" He knelt down beside the shaking boy, assessing his injuries. He had a few cuts and bruises, but nothing serious enough to explain the blood on his shirt. Ianto nodded. "I live in Cardiff. I'm not from there originally as you can tell." He smiled again as he joked about his accent.

He pulled the younger man to his feet and kept a supportive arm around his waist as he guided them out of the office and in to one of the long winding corridors of identical walls. Any other time the American would happily have been all over the welsh boy. He looked in his mid twenties, well spoken and from the label sticking out of his shirt, he was a sharp dresser. It wasn't the time to be hitting in the poor guy though, not among the dead bodies of their co-workers and the crumbling remains of what had been Torchwood One.

"Is there someone I can call for you? A relative? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?"

"My girlfriend. Lisa." Ianto mumbled, fresh tears threatening to spill from his tired eyes. "They killed her. Those things. I saw what they did to her. Ripped in to her flesh, welded metal to her bones...she was screaming for me to help her, but I couldn't-" He broke down, fell to his knees a in a sobbing, quivering wreck.

Captain Jack Harkness knelt down beside him, his long grey coat gathering dust off the floor. He watched the traumatised boy cry his heart out. He understood what he was going through. The pain of losing someone close to you. Watching the people you care about dying all around you while you lived on. Alone.

What would happen to him? A scared lonely kid far away from home? He'd probably be given compensation, told to keep quiet and relocated. His youth, his life, it would be wasted, along with his sanity. Jack couldn't be sure why he cared so much about the stranger crying in to his chest. Perhaps he recognised some potential in the boy? He had after all survived a massacre. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him thinking with his head, perhaps he just wanted to know what the handsome young Welshman would look like when he was smiling.

He wrapped his arms around him, holding him protectively. They sat there for a good ten minutes, Jack rocking the crying Ianto in his arms and muttering soothing words in his ear. "Every thing's going to be OK Ianto. I'm gonna take care of you."

----

I guess I let you down." Ianto looked up from the coffee machine with a blank expression. They hadn't exchanged a word in the two days it had been since the Lisa incident. "I screwed up. I promised to take care of you and ended up causing you more pain. To be fair though, you hurt me too Ianto. You betrayed my trust."

Ianto calmly sat the coffee mugs back down on the bench. He remained blank, almost emotionless. Same old Ianto Jones. Adjusting his tie he walked straight up to Jack; staring him in the eye, his own wise and tired eyes finally letting some of the pain he'd harboured for so long shine through.

"I suppose that makes us even then, sir." With the same old empty smile, the one he'd worn all the time Jack had known him, he walked off. Returning to boy who pretended to be a man, acted like everything was fine, when his world was crashing down around him. Even Captain conman Jack Harkness had been fooled by a flash of Ianto's perfect pearly whites; until Lisa. He knew now that the Ianto he knew was as fake as Jack himself. Had either of them ever given a genuine smile?

Fin.