Coming Apart

Series: Stitches

Word Count: ~ 2.200

Summary: Jack looked at him steadily, let him see that he knew, that he was disappointed and angry and insulted. That she was really, really gone.

Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett

Pairing: Jack/Ianto (pre-slash), Ianto/Lisa Hallett (hinted)

Rating: R

Spoiler: Cyberwoman / Doctor Who: Parting Of The Ways, Army Of Ghosts, Doomsday

Setting: sometime between Day One and Cyberwoman

Warnings: Violence, description of character death

Contains: slight AU

Author's Note: Written for the torchwood_fest Winter Exchange. Rudika gave five prompts, I took three and made a series out of them. This is Part One for the prompt For someone dressed so proper, Ianto is coming apart at the seams.

Beta: larsinger29, thank you!

Disclaimer: I'm not making money with this fanfic. The tv-show Torchwood and the characters appearing within it belong to their producers and creators. Any similarities to living or dead persons are purely coincidental and not intended.

xxx

It was shock – complete and utter shock – that froze Jack in the doorway of the small, moist room in the basement of the Hub.

And there, in the middle of the room, surrounded by a lamp, a chair and a small table with a picture on it: a conversion unit.

In his base.

And not only was there a conversion unit here but it also wasn't empty. A woman was strapped into it, looking like a half-finished version of the Cybermen who had burned Torchwood Tower to the ground and … he couldn't breathe and backed out of the room, slamming the door and taking a few steps back. Torchwood Tower. Only one of his team members had been there during the battle, had lost …

"Girlfriend: Lisa Hallett."

"Deceased."

Jack took a deep breath and leaned against the cold wall of the corridor. He stared at the wooden door, looking so plain and innocent. The dim lights flickered, reminding him of the reason he'd come here. One of the generators had suffered an overload and Tosh had tracked the problem to this sub-level, this room. Suddenly, Jack was glad that he'd been the one to come down here. If Ianto wasn't out to get dinner right now, he would have taken care of this. Jack was sure of that. Because the generators had been causing problems for months – since Ianto had started working here, actually – and Ianto had always been the one to take care of it.

In his long life, Jack had experienced a lot of things several times and he'd hardened himself against them. This form of betrayal, though, was something he'd experienced only once before.

The TARDIS leaving ... leaving him behind.

He startled when a weak voice came from the other side of the door. "Ianto?"

Jack squeezed his eyes shut and straightened, squaring his shoulders. He had to do something before Ianto would be back and realize that something was wrong. He would take care of this and have dinner with the team and then wait until everyone but Ianto had left. And then they would have a talk.

"Ianto?"

Jack checked his Webley, suddenly glad he hadn't taken it off after the Weevil hunt this afternoon. He put one hand on the door, ready to push it open and closed his eyes for a second, allowing himself a moment to switch off his emotions. He'd become good at that during his time as an interrogator. He could get this done and lock his emotions away until later, until he was ready for them. When he was alone. A potential threat to the whole planet was here, in his base, relatively vulnerable – he had no time for emotions.

He pushed open the door and entered. The girl … Lisa looked at him with dark, scared eyes. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice trembling.

Jack stepped closer, glancing at the picture on the table – Ianto and Lisa in a park, happy and in love – and then focussed his attention on her. "The guy who's in charge around here."

"Captain Harkness."

He narrowed his eyes. "Ianto told you about me?"

She stared at him, her eyes wide and fearful. "He … he did. Where is he?"

"Getting dinner. At least he said he would. Can't trust him, though, ain't that right?"

Lisa sobbed. "Please, please don't hurt me. I'm not one of them, I can be healed. We were about to-"

"I don't fucking care." Her tears and fear pulled at his sympathy but he pushed it back down firmly. He took a closer look at the complicated life-support system hooked up to her and the conversion unit and then found the switch that connected everything to the Hub's electricity circuits.

"No," Lisa said, "please ..."

He switched the electricity off. She gasped, fighting for air. In the dim, flickering lights of the room, Jack watched her writhing on the unit, trying to escape. But she was too weak. Her breaths turned to wheezes, painful to listen to, and Jack allowed a bit of sympathy to escape. For the sake of the girl this being had once been. His grip around the Webley tightened.

Her face crumbled when she saw him approach. "Don't kill me."

"Very convincing," he said. "No wonder you've got Ianto wrapped around your little finger but that doesn't work for me. Lisa is long gone or at least locked away in her own mind, am I right? You're just using her body to rebuild the Cybermen army."

Her face turned to stone, defiance radiating from her eyes. "You will be the first to be deleted." All pretence was stripped away. Her voice sounded metallic and her eyes had lost every trace of fear.

"No," Jack answered and pointed his gun at her head, "you will."

He pulled the trigger.

xxx

After the power levels had been restored, nobody had mentioned the problems anymore and dinner had been a relaxing affair. Jack sent everybody home as soon as they were done and Owen, Gwen and Tosh were gone quickly, on their way to a pub. Jack had turned the invitation to tag along down, knowing he had to confront Ianto before he got a chance to sneak down into the basement under the pretence of checking something in the archives. He watched Ianto clean up the boardroom and then asked for a last round of coffee.

Ianto didn't just bring that into Jack's office a few minutes later, but also set down a plate with biscuits. "If there's nothing else you need, I'd like to go home, Captain," he said.

Jack looked at him. Really looked at him. He ignored the way the suit hid the slim body from sight that Jack had fantasized about every now and again when he'd been alone and horny. He ignored the long legs that he'd imagined would wrap around his hips so perfectly, the tight arse that distracted him from work sometimes, the shy smile that was just the right amount of wicked and the blue eyes that sometimes challenged him and other times regarded him with indifference.

It was easy to see once Jack had switched off the part of him that wanted to bend Ianto over his desk, wanted to bed him gently and tenderly in his bunker, wanted to rip off clothes and muss hair and bruise lips with his own. Now, he saw the dark shadows under Ianto's eyes, the pasty white of his skin that had nothing to do with the delicious paleness the Welsh were privy to. He noticed the way the suit was too big in some places as if Ianto had lost weight since he'd bought it. He noticed exhaustion and worry and guilt in Ianto's eyes. This was a man betraying him, lying to him and leading him on without letting him cash in – but this certainly wasn't a man who did it out of malice or greed or insanity. This man loved the girl in the basement. He loved Lisa Hallett. Maybe he had no idea he was being misled, manipulated. Or maybe he'd decided not to know. This was a man who, for someone dressed so properly, was coming apart at the seams.

"Captain?" Ianto asked, confusion showing on his young face.

Jack got up, walked around the desk. He leaned into Ianto's personal space, watching Ianto's eyes widen slightly, noticing how he tensed but didn't move away. Jack wondered if Ianto would let him touch him, run his hands over his body, underneath his clothes. Would he let him kiss him, strip him … fuck him? Would he let Jack do all that just to make sure he was happy with him and oblivious? There was a part of Jack – a dark part that he tried to suppress – that wanted to find out. Instead, he said, "She's gone."

Ianto smiled. "Who is gone, sir?"

Jack looked at him steadily, let him see that he knew, that he was disappointed and angry and insulted. That she was really, really gone.

Ianto's smile died slowly. "Who is gone, sir?" he asked again, his voice breaking on the last words. Then he whirled around and ran. Jack looked after him, knowing exactly where Ianto was going. Slowly, he followed him.

He found Ianto standing at the conversion unit in the dim light coming from the lamp, cradling Lisa's upper body to his chest. Tears were running down his cheeks and silent sobs shook his frame.

Jack tucked his emotions away once again. Just for another hour or two. Just until he knew how this day would end. "You brought a Cyberwoman into my Hub and you thought I wouldn't notice?"

Ianto froze, standing still as a statue.

"Do you really think I'm that stupid, Ianto?"

When he spoke, Ianto's voice was monotone, calm … unnerving. "No, I just hoped you would be blind enough."

"Well, I wasn't."

"You killed her," Ianto whispered.

"I removed a potential threat."

"You killed her!"

Jack was ready when Ianto came charging for him, caught him and pinned him to the wall with Jack's hands wrapped around Ianto's wrists to hold him in place. Jack stared at Ianto intently, trying to make him understand while he struggled to hold onto him. "That girl was long gone. You probably think she was still alive but she wasn't. The Cyberbeing killed her, took over her brain and deleted her."

"Don't say that!" Ianto managed to push Jack away by sheer force of will and the right hook caught Jack across the jaw, knocking him to the floor. "You monster!" Ianto screamed. "You killed her!" He pinned Jack to the floor and hit him again. Jack managed to grab him and flip them around. He pulled the syringe he'd taken from the autopsy bay from his trouser pocket and jammed it into Ianto's arm. Ianto hit his hand away but it was too late. The syringe was empty. "What did you do?" Ianto asked, fighting him, but his movements were already becoming sluggish.

Jack held him down. "I'm helping you."

"I don't need your help," Ianto replied and new tears welled up in his eyes. "Leave me alone." He sobbed. "You killed her."

"I'm sorry."

"You fucking bastard!"

"I'm so sorry," Jack whispered, brushing a hand through Ianto's hair until he fell asleep.

xxx

Jack was sitting on a chair beside Ianto's bed when he woke. He could pin-point the exact moment Ianto remembered. His face, when unguarded, was surprisingly expressive. Jack expected him to fight, to get up and hit him, but he didn't. Instead, he seemed to huddle into himself even more, hiding from his bright bedroom lights. Jack realized then that Ianto had known all along, on some subconscious level: he'd been played and played well. And Lisa had either been dead for months or trapped in her own body, her consciousness suppressed by the Cyberbeing. For that reason, Jack decided to ignore the Retcon pills in his coat pocket. He'd brought them, of course, because he couldn't be sure. Now he was. And he'd thought about what to do, thought long and hard. He'd dismissed execution from the start. Retcon had been the alternative to what he was planning on doing now. "Suspension, four weeks," he said. "I'll tell the others you have a family emergency. Nobody needs to know what happened. Take that time to grieve properly." He got up. "If you need to talk, I'm just a phone call away."

"There was a chance … I did what I had to do," Ianto whispered.

Jack put his hands on his hips. "So did I."

"I want to leave."

"Retcon. You would have to lose the memory of Torchwood and with it, the memory of Lisa. Does she deserve that?"

Ianto closed his eyes and Jack knew that he'd won. Ianto would stay and Jack would get the chance to make it better.

Nevertheless, he left Ianto a choice. "If you still feel like leaving in two weeks, let me know. I'll come and arrange everything." He headed for the bedroom door, stopped short and turned back to Ianto. "I don't give third chances, Ianto. Don't screw this up." With that, he left.

END

08/12