Written for torchwood_fest on livejournal and now it has been posted there for two weeks I can cross post.
Title Finding Ways to Smile Again.
Prompt. Jo02's prompt: Ianto is secretly rescued by Ten after he dies in Thames House, and taken onto the TARDIS. Work with what was televised of the rest of Day 4 and 5, no AU from what was seen on TV. Ianto is returned to Jack after he leaves Earth 6 months later. Your choice whether to concentrate on Ianto and Ten travelling, or the reunion and after Ianto and Jack are back together. Can be angst or angst with happy ending.
Word Count 6400
Rating PG
Contains Canon mention of death of a child. Spoilers for Children of Earth and for Doctor Who episode 'The End of Time' Crossover with Doctor Who.
Warnings None of Torchwood-fest's warnings apply to this story.
Summary Seeing Jack at the bar, so defeated, so lost, so sad, that had been heart-breaking. There was only one thing for it, the Doctor decided, he had to find a way of bringing Ianto back to him.
Beta iantojjackh
A/N Thank you to iantojjackh for betaing this for me.
Part 1. The Doctor.
He'd misjudged him. Misjudged Jack. Again.
The Doctor supposed, in his defence that he didn't actually know Jack all that well any more. Assuming Jack hadn't changed after a couple of hundred years probably hadn't been the best idea he'd ever had. Trying to set up on what would have most likely been a one night stand to say sorry really hadn't been the most thoughtful of ones either. Especially as Jack was mourning the loss of the man he had evidently loved very much.
There had to be a way to put it right, to make Jack smile again. Because seeing Jack at that bar, so defeated, so lost, so sad, that had been heart-breaking. There was only one thing for it. He had to find a way of bringing Ianto back to him. The problem was the time-line would have to appear to the same – well from Jack's point of view at least. It was Jack that was complicating everything with his fixed point in time-ness, not that that was Jack's fault really. So much of what had happened to Jack wasn't his fault. He'd changed so much from the conman who'd accidentally turned a good size chunk of London into gas mask wearing zombies and flirted with anything that moved.
It breaks his hearts that he can't do more, can't save the child as well. He'd not even known Jack had been a grandfather. He'd been a grandfather once. A father too. All casualties of the Last Great Time War. All lives he'd been unable to save.
Well not this time. He had to think. Think. He paced around the TARDIS console. Think… think… think… think. He had millennia of experience. Why couldn't he think? Ah yes, the imminent regeneration bubbling just under his skin. Well, it wasn't happening just yet, not while he had so much to do, so many people to see and so little time to do it.
Time that was it. Just like the trick with Martha and the tie. Plant something before, reveal it afterwards. He just needed to go back and give Ianto Jones something so that the gas released in Thames House wouldn't kill him.
The Doctor frowned. Giving him something like a vaccine wouldn't be any good, as Ianto still needed to appear dead for Jack to do what he did and to run afterwards. He hated to think what losing Ianto and his grandson followed by all those months of cutting himself off from any comfort he might have been given would do to Jack, how much he'd suffer. Because he was suffering, racked with grief and guilt, still unable to come to terms with any of it by the time he'd found him in the bar so many months on from that terrible week.
Sontaran cloning tech would be ideal, but it would take more time than he had. Which was ridiculous really, when he thought about it. A Time Lord with no time left. No, there had to be something else. A shimmer. That would work. Program it to look like young mister Jones and put it on a body... No that wasn't fair. Somebody would be missed, and if somebody was missed there would be people who'd start looking and that could make the whole thing unravel. A shop dummy, that would do.
Now all he had to do was find Ianto, preferably on his own or at the very least without Jack, no more than two days before the Thames House incident. Then it would just be a simple matter of getting him to breath in some of a compound that, when mixed with the gas, would act like a stasis drug and fool everybody.
The Doctor found Ianto in London, leaving a coffee shop, bags of clothes in one hand and a tray of drinks in the other.
Looking tired and rather bruised, he was still alert to any dangers around as he made his way through the bustling streets. So this was the man who'd caught Jack's heart, the Doctor thought, the man who'd managed the impossible. It hadn't been possible to tell much about him during the brief moments he'd previously seen them when the Earth had been pulled out of orbit. Yes, the Doctor decided, as he watched him head back to where Jack and Gwen were hiding, there was definitely something about him.
It was easy to get ahead of him, using the perception filter that he'd given Martha so that she'd been able to walk around the world undetected, and release it into the air as he walked by.
Ianto wrinkled his nose it drifted past him and gave disgusted look at the overflowing bins at the back of a takeaway before continuing on his way.
The Doctor tucked the bottle back inside his suit and returned to the TARDIS. Now all he had to do was collect him in a couple day's time, give him a dose of the antidote to wake him up and then take him to Jack in the bar. Then he could get on with seeing all the other people he needed to say goodbye to. Not that he was sure it would really be goodbye, but it probably was better to err on the side of caution just this once.
The morgue was deserted when the TARDIS materialised, the staff long since left for home. So many lives lost, the Doctor thought sadly, as he looked for the right drawer.
Inside was Ianto lying cold and still, his eyes closed and lips tinged blue in such an accurate approximation of death that it made the Doctor pause, worried for a moment that his plan hadn't worked. A quick check with one of the settings on the sonic screwdriver, allayed that fear as it detected the faint, but present electrical pulses of brain activity.
After swapping Ianto for the dummy and securing the shimmer to it, the Doctor picked Ianto up. Carrying him over his shoulder and in to the TARDIS. "Right, here we go. Time to see Jack."
Glad that it wasn't far, the Doctor placed Ianto down against one of the arching coral struts in the TARDIS control room.
"Wakey wakey," the Doctor said, crouching down beside Ianto and carefully tipping a small vial of shimmering blue liquid into his mouth.
Ianto eyes snapped open and he stared at him before looking around wild-eyed, filled with fear and confusion. "How..." He began, but whatever else he was going to say was cut off by a series of violent fits of coughing until he was wheezing and blood stained his lips.
He stared at the Doctor for a moment, abject terror in his eyes, before he slumped sideways onto the floor, barely conscious and struggling to breathe.
"Oh no, no you don't," the Doctor the said, rolling Ianto into the recovery position before hurrying back to the TARDIS controls. "No dying, I mean it." A quick trip to the 32nd century to one of the automated hospitals should do it, the Doctor decided. Quick service and an absolute minimum of questions was just what he needed right now.
"A little help here," the Doctor called as he carried Ianto out of the TARDIS and into the hospital.
One of the robotic medics, who looked like a solid grey metal rectangle with arms, hovered over. A trolley teleported down next to it as it reached the Doctor.
"He needs new lungs," the medic said in a monotone voice after running a paddle shaped hand over Ianto's chest. "They will take four weeks to grow. We will freeze him while they grow. He will die otherwise. You have no objections?"
"No, of course not," the Doctor gives it a baffled look. "I mean why would I? I brought him here to get better didn't I?"
"He will recover. You can wait here." The medic pressed a button on its chest and a second or two later a ticket came out of a thin slot just below it. It handed it to the Doctor. "You can collect him in thirty five days. We do not do refunds if unsuccessful. If you do not collect him after forty days you will be billed for the extra time. Terms and conditions apply. We use Judoon collection agencies for non-payment."
Well there was no way he could sit there and wait for just over a month, even if he had the time. So with one last look at Ianto the Doctor left.
A quick trip to 2010 to stop Luke getting run over, then to 2017 to help Martha and Mickey and followed by a very brief stop in 2011 for Donna's wedding. Then back to the 32nd century to get Ianto.
"You are late. Forty three days have passed," the medic on duty said as the Doctor handed his ticket in at the counter. "You will not be billed for this. He needed extra treatment."
"Oh." The Doctor peered round him, trying to see into the ward. "I can collect him though, can't I? Only there's somebody he has to meet and I really can't wait. Busy that me."
"He will need rest for a minimum of two more weeks," the medic advised it glided round the counter, hovering about a foot off floor as it showed the Doctor the way. It stopped and whirred for a moment, an internal teleport switching on and off, then a square hatch opened in the centre of it. It reached inside with one of its telescopic arms and then handed two bottles to the Doctor. "For pain." It tapped one bottle, then the other, adding, "Against infection. Please read instructions while within universal translation field. Errors made due to later reading failure are not the responsibility of the hospital."
The Doctor had to admit for somebody who was apparently well enough to leave Ianto looked awful. Much thinner than when he'd left him and nearly as pale as he'd been when he'd been just about dead, he was sat on the edge of his bed, trying to button his shirt with shaking fingers. Where his chest was visible through the gap in the unfastened clothes there was a livid, vertical scar, around it his chest hair only just growing back where it had been shaved off. The technology used to speed healing internally apparently not having any effect on the surface of the skin or perhaps the medics just didn't care about how it looked as long as it worked.
Ianto stared at the Doctor for a moment then stood up. Taking a few shaky steps towards him, Ianto held out his hand. "Thank you. " He looked around, expression getting more and more worried. "Where's Jack?"