Title: Something in the Dark
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Jack, Gwen, ?
Summary: Post-COE. Jack has returned to Earth and brought him an unprecedented danger.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood and its characters.
Notes: Written for the jack_ianto_las for the prompt "arrogance diminishes wisdom".
She's crying again. He hates it when she cries, makes him feel soft and sorry and repentant, just when he doesn't want to.
"Jack," she sobs, and those damned tears roll down her cheeks. "What have you done?"
"It should have worked," he hears himself mumble. It should have worked. He had the calculations right, he had everything right. Why hadn't it worked?
"Of course you got it right!" she screams. Her tears are gone now, and what is left is a rictus full of fear and anger. Fear for her child. Anger at him. Anger he deserves, but at least she's stopped crying.
"You got it right, damn it, you got it perfectly right and that's why he's out there with my child, Jack! He has Anwen! Don't you fucking give a damn about her?"
He hadn't come back until Anwen had been months old, and he'd left Gwen alone with her grief and the dead remnants of Torchwood, but she'd still made him Anwen's godfather. Still flung herself into his arms when he'd returned, and smiled when he promised to stay. Her heart was in the right place, and he needed that, but Gwen loves too much for her own damn good. And she let it blind her. Now, it seems the shutters are finally being opened.
"I-"
"I should have stopped you!" she rants on and the tears, god help him, the tears are back again. "But you said I could have him back and I wanted him back, Jack, I wanted him back so badly, more than Tosh and Owen. When you were gone I hoped you'd be searching for some way to get him back, and when you said you'd found a way, it was like, like…"
It had felt like, for once in his life, the universe had done something in his favor. It owed him so much and finally, he had been given what was rightfully his. What he'd shed tears and sweat and blood to earn.
Gwen's tirade trails off, and now she just sounds scared and so, so tired. "You said we could have him back, and I said yes. Because that meant I'd have you back too." She buries her face in her hands, and slides down the wall to crouch broken at his feet. Her voice is muffled but he can still hear her whisper, "... all my fault."
No it isn't. It's his, really. What do they call it in this century? Playing gods? Idiots. If only they knew. They've never been to the ninety-seventh century. It should have worked, but it hasn't. He must've done something wrong. A miscalculation maybe. Corrupted DNA. A malfunction in the tank. Something.
His fault, because he's prepared for all this and it still happened. His fault, because he let him die in the first place.
His phone rings, breaking the uncomfortable silence. Gwen scrambles to her feet as he answers.
"Harkness."
"Hello, cariad." Oh god. Guilt curls in his gut, sits heavy in his belly, like a canker.
"You have twenty minutes." He hates how that, that thinghas corrupted his memories of Ianto, turned that beautiful voice into something cold and harsh and disgusting.
"What do you want?"
"For you to find me of course, cariad. Find me, find the girl. Better hurry up. The stopwatch's ticking, tick, tick."
Fin