Why Does No-one Ever Talk to Me?

"Why does no-one ever talk to me?" Jack asked, speaking into the night, alone but for the gusting winds. "I'm attractive, compelling, charismatic, easygoing, trustworthy . . ." He stared out over the city, alive with lights, ignoring the plunging fall waiting a step before him. "Well, I'm usually trustworthy. Except when my team won't confide in me, which forces me to take under-handed and sneaky action."

He'd always thought he was good with people - understanding them, dealing with them. Until Suzie Costello started killing people right under his nose, and it took an outsider's interference for him to figure it out.

That was when it occurred to him, that maybe he wasn't as good at dealing with people as he thought he was. Or maybe he had been good at reading people before, but he thought this abnormally long life might be changing him, isolating him.

That was the reason he had hired Gwen in the first place - to keep him in touch with his humanity, remind him and the others of why they were doing this. To be the 'heart' of the team, as clichéd as it sounded.

He had also hired her with the view to training her up to handle the personnel issues, the emotional side of leading a team. He was slightly irritated with her, that she hadn't spotted this - too preoccupied with Owen, of all people. To be fair though, she hadn't been here long enough to know Tosh well - was probably unreasonable of him to expect her to know the difference between Tosh being Tosh, and Tosh being weird. Besides, he hasn't spoken to her about that part of her role here. It was one of the duties of the second-in-command, something that Suzie was supposed to take care of. He'd never thought who was supposed to look out for Suzie - a mistake he wasn't going to make again. Gwen was so like her, he couldn't help but keep her close, keep an eye out for her, try to make up for his mistakes with her predecessor.

The third reason he had hired her was because Ianto had seemed to think it was a good idea. Not that he actually said so - no, that would have been too obvious. Instead, Jack had noticed a tourist brochure with information about the Millennium Plaza amongst Gwen's things, which looked like it might have come from the Tourist office. The word 'remember' had been scrawled across the front of it in what looked suspiciously like Ianto's handwriting.

He wondered if Gwen would have begun to remember at all, would have begun to question, would she have stood waiting outside the Millennium Centre that night and encountered Suzie, if Ianto hadn't planted that reminder? Would Suzie still be alive and well, on the run and murdering her way to what she thought was her salvation? Gwen wouldn't have been hired, would have gone back to her ordinary life. Owen wouldn't have been distracted by his new affair, would have realized there was something wrong with Tosh long before him, and confronted her about it.

The longer he lived, the less he saw events as individual things, but more as the result of a number of other events, decisions and coincidence, intersecting and influencing each other in unpredictable ways. And it was so frustrating, because the more he saw, the more familiar everything became. Nothing was new anymore. He observed the same patterns over and over again, and as time passed he became very good at predicting the outcomes. It was useful, but so boring. Which was one of the many reasons he became involved in Torchwood.

Chaos theory hadn't changed much in the two thousand and ninety-three years between now and his own time. Not in his admittedly unlearned opinion, anyway. His favourite example? If a butterfly flutters its wings in the Amazon, what will the weather be like in Johannesburg? There are far too many variables to measure and observe - wind speed, humidity, air temperature, turbulence, altitude, any other butterflies that may have decided to flutter their wings – so many variables that accurately predicting weather was nearly impossible. You can guess, sure. And sometimes the weatherman gets it right. But it's impossible to be 100 accurate. There were too many variables to take into account, too many unknowns. That was Chaos Theory, as he understood it - the theory that it was impossible to know everything, and therefore impossible to predict the outcome of anything with absolute certainty.

And the more unknowns, the more variables involved, the harder it became to correctly predict the outcome of a situation. Which was why he loved working here. There was nowhere else on this tiny little backwater of a planet that had more unknown factors than Torchwood.

He had also picked his team based on this theory. which in hindsight may have been a mistake. They had livened up his life no end, but having four unpredictable, occasionally volatile people working with unpredictable, occasionally volatile alien tech . . . probably not his best idea.

Owen was like a cat. He was curious about everything, and was always inexplicably gaining access to things that Jack could have sworn he had locked away securely. He seemed to have the nine spare lives as well, considering the number of times Jack had caught him fiddling with items that could have killed him. There was that antique Racnossian pulse-mine that could have vibrated the entire Hub into rubble, the portable Lilithian suicide device that would have transported him into the vacuum of space, or that device scavenged after the KoKoKoDa music-collectors had left in such a hurry, that emitted a roaring, ear splittingly loud rendition of Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time' - not deadly of itself, but the KoKoKoDa were known throughout the galaxy for their love of repetitive sound, and hearing that song seventy times in a row would probably drive even the strongest-willed man, or the most die-hard fan, to suicide in an attempt to escape it.

No, a cat would have better survival instincts than Owen.

So, maybe comparing him to a toddler would be more accurate. Even though Owen was a good doctor, he had all the commonsense of a four-year-old, none of the charm, and was three times as irritating.

Keeping him out of trouble, and occasionally keeping the girls, Tosh and Suzie, then Tosh and Gwen, from killing him was nearly a fulltime job on its own. Ianto was the only one he could trust never to act on the urge to kill the caustic-tongued doctor in his sleep. He and Owen seemed to have an understanding of sorts, which involved lots of subtle sniping (Ianto) and many slurs about tea

Ianto had been a wildcard. Jack had hired him in a fit of contrariness, and curiosity, knowing next to nothing about him.

Margot, the old battle-axe that headed Human Resources at Torchwood One, had given him a call about two weeks after the Battle of Canary Wharf, telling him that one of her staff had requested a transfer to Cardiff. A temporary transfer, she had stressed. Jack had wondered idly why she was making this call - she disliked him as much as he did her, so he didn't think she wanted to talk to him, and transfers were usually handled by underlings, not Department Heads.

She had told him the agent seeking the transfer was a survivor of the Battle, one of the few who had chosen not to be ret-conned afterwards. She had said that she thought working at Cardiff would give him some time to recuperate.

He had ignored the sly taunt. Despite the condescending views held by the London Branch about Cardiff being a cushy gig, Jack knew that Torchwood Three was not the place for walking wounded. So he lied, apologized and said they were fully staffed.

She had been very understanding, telling him not to worry about it, and that something else would be arranged.

And, as Margot of Human Resources was never understanding, Jack's curiosity was aroused. He had interrupted, saying that though they were fully staffed at the moment, Rift activity was increasing and it was probably better to break a new team member in now, rather than wait until the shit was flying.

To this she had replied that she didn't think a secretary would be of much use, and besides the assignment would only be temporary.

He had asked her to send him the employee file anyway, let him have a look and he'll get back to her.

When Margot had told him that Mr Jones' files were destroyed during the battle, and unfortunately she would be unable to oblige, Jack had smelled a rather large, long dead, decomposing rat, and told her to send the man down for an interview. If she wanted to keep him that badly, it might be worth getting him on board.

Mr Jones had been much younger than he'd imagined - hotter, too. Couldn't have been a day over twenty-five. He had shown up for his appointment ten minutes early, black leather briefcase in hand, wearing an expensive, obviously tailor-made suit, a silver watch strapped about his wrist. He had looked completely out-of-place within the old, worn Tourist Office - more like a successful lawyer about to attend Court than the veteran of a battle that had seen most of his colleagues turned into inhuman abominations.

They had shaken hands, Jack's intentionally lingering for a moment longer than necessary. The boy had risen an eyebrow slightly but otherwise did not respond. Once Jack had released him, he had set his briefcase carefully down on Jack's desk and withdrew a thick, bound CV, one he had prepared on the trip down, he explained, when he was informed that his employee records had been destroyed.

Glancing quickly through the resume, he had seen nothing that would have provoked such possessiveness in the Icy Margot. So he dismissed the old hag's interest, thinking to himself it must be a case of a good secretary being hard to find. Or maybe vice versa, a hard secretary being good to find. Although, even Jack, open-minded 51st century man though he was, felt ill at the thought of those cadaverous, old, wrinkled hands caressing lanto's soft, smooth skin (well, he imagined it was soft and smooth. And would welcome the chance to find out for himself. With great enthusiasm).

So he had hired Ianto Jones, as much to irritate the old hag as because he desperately needed help with the archiving and the paperwork. Owen thought filing was what you did to keep your fingernails neat, Tosh was overloaded as it was and getting Suzie to organize the Archives would have been like leaving a kid unsupervised in a toy store.

There was another reason, though - he had seen this type of reaction before, experienced it himself. You keep moving, throwing yourself into work or play or whatever it is you think will help you forget, ignoring the demons of memory nipping at your heels, relentless in their pursuit. You can outrun them for a little while, but they keep coming, and eventually they catch up, pouncing on your back, knocking you face first into the ground. And there had been something about that apparently ordinary, blue-eyed, innocent-seeming, self-effacing young secretary that made him want to be there when he fell.

It hadn't occurred to him until much later, when he had been cleaning up the mess left in Lisa's wake, that Ianto might have been 'selective' about his CV's content. Clever as he was, there was no way a secretary, even a Torchwood secretary, would have the expertise to do all that Ianto had done, transporting Lisa's inert form all the way from London to Cardiff. Keeping her hidden for so long right under their noses, and smiling - or if not smiling, looking impassive - the whole time he did it.

Jack frowned down at the headlights of cars, passing by on the streets below. He recalled that he still hadn't seen the 'destroyed' file. He made a mental note to try and charm it out of Margot's clutches. Surely Margot was resigned to the fact that she had lost Ianto by now - her every attempt to get him back had been met with increased resistance and hostility as he became ever more vital to Torchwood Three's operation, until she finally surrendered. He smiled slightly. Maybe one of her underlings would be a better choice - he doubted Margot would ever willingly speak to him again after their last exchange.

He flicked his gaze down to the vortex manipulator at his wrist, to check if the proximity alarm had been tripped. No flashing red light - Tosh hadn't arrived yet. He was sure she would, eventually. She was like that - if there was something wrong, if Tosh was feeling upset, or uncomfortable or unsafe, she went home as soon as she could, to her own space, usually alone.

Tosh was such a private person. He hated to invade her home like this - not that she gave him much of a choice. There was obviously something wrong, and if Tosh didn't want to talk to him he would have to find out the inconsiderate way.

He had met Tosh not long after she returned from her first mission for Torchwood One. He had been trying to poach staff for his new base at Cardiff, without much success. In hindsight, he might have had better luck if he said his base was on the south coast and left it at that.

Tosh had caught his eye – a rather short, pretty Japanese woman, slight within a huge white lab coat, hair pulled back in a rushed ponytail, verbally flaying strips of skin off two wide-eyed men half again her size, who had dared to make a crack at the expense of the odd-looking alien on Level 4, Cell A within her hearing.

When she had finished and the large guys had slunk off down the hall, he had asked her out to dinner. Jack told her about the new office opening up at Cardiff, and to his surprise she actually gave it some thought, rather than dismissing it out of hand. They had got to talking, and she had told him how tired she was of the attitudes she kept encountering among the other employees at Torchwood One. The whole 'it's alien, it's ours' thing, how everyone just assumed that because they were human they were better than anything locked away in the cells, the way the management discarded or discounted any objects or research that didn't have military applications.

When he heard her say this, he had to have her. What she had described was exactly what he didn't want Torchwood Three to be. There was more than one reason he decided to join Torchwood, and one of the main reasons was to try and change it, change its attitudes, motivations and procedures. Torchwood One was too large to do much about by himself, so when he was given the opportunity to open a smaller base in Cardiff he jumped at it. He knew that the management were trying to get him out of the way, but he didn't care. He preferred working within smaller groups, anyway.

Then she told him about her first assignment, and he knew it was meant to be.

When Big Ben had been hit by an unidentified spacecraft a few years ago, Tosh had been the closest agent to the Albion Hospital, and the one most likely to be mistaken for a doctor. She could talk the talk, she could wear the coat, she was in.

Of course, it was only her first assignment, so she was only there to keep an eye on the corpse until someone else came to collect it. She had tucked it away in a storage closet and sat sentry duty by the examination room door, until she heard the clanging. And, like some bimbo in a horror movie (her words), she had gone over and opened the door.

The man she described who came to her assistance, leading a score of fully armed soldiers into the room, could have been no-one but the Doctor, the whole reason behind his desire to change Torchwood.

So Jack had done some fast talking, made some rash but honest promises. He had told her his vision for Torchwood Three, and she had followed him to Cardiff.

Tosh was the sane one, the reliable one, the calm one. Their stability. She was an honorable woman, and was still naïve enough to expect others to act honorably. She was an adrenaline junkie, sure, but she was smart enough not to take stupid risks.

She was a woman who needed privacy like she needed air, a need he didn't really understand though he tried to respect it. And here he was, waiting impatiently for her to get home so he could listen to her secrets.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, careful not to dislodge the Bluetooth device inserted in his ear. Huge, obtrusive things . . . he wished he could make a quick jump forward about ten years and pick up some of those biological interface implants. They were primitive compared to the stuff they have back home, but better than what they were using now. And at least there was no chance of losing the implants. Unless you managed to have your head cut off, but at that point losing your comm would probably be the least of your worries.

He was happy with the bugs, though. The only problem with them was that, with the right bit of machinery, they were as easy to find as a Judoon at a solicitor's conference.

Lucky for him, though, none of the team seemed to bother scanning their homes for listening devices. They were there, always ready if needed but never activated unless he thought it necessary.

It was a bit worrying, actually, their lack of concern about personal security and safety outside of work. All it took was one slip . . . forget to lock the doors and windows or arm the security systems at night, don't scan the parking lot before climbing out of the car, neglect to check the other cubicles before using a public bathroom. Torchwood had enemies. He had enemies. Some who wouldn't hesitate to use his team to get to him. And alien life forms usually didn't respect the boundaries between personal and professional life.

A career like this, you can never leave it at the office.

He would have to have a talk to the team about it. Somehow avoiding any mention of bugging their homes.

A light flickered at the corner of his vision. Tosh was home. With no-one else about to comment, he lifted his wrist up to eyelevel, squinting at the vortex manipulator strapped there. 'Must be getting old,' he thought to himself as he located the correct switch. 'Wonder how I'd look in horn-rimmed glasses?' he thought idly. 'Stern, probably. Might have to consider buying a pair. Need all the authority I can get, with this team of mine.'

He flicked the switch, then tilted his head slightly to the side, looking out to the horizon as he listened.

There's a thud as a door closes, the steps of two pairs of heels on tile.

"Come on, Toshiko, talk to me," a husky female voice. No-one he recognized. "Tell me what's wrong."

There's no reply, the thud of something hitting the ground, the further clicking of shoes against tile, the slight rattle of keys against wood – hanging them up on a nail, maybe?

"I can't help you if you won't talk to me." A second thud – handbags dropped against the ground?

"Why did you give it to me, Mary?" Tosh's voice was soft, empty

"You know why," Her tone was impatient, then gentle again as she continued. "We've been over this before."

"No, we haven't. Why did you give it to me?"

"Because I care about you. And after what you said, at the pub . . ." one pair of shoes stopped clicking, and was replaced with soft padding. Shoes removed. "you needed something, to prove that there was more to alien life than weaponry and warfare."

"And you thought this was it? 'After awhile it gets to you' that's what you said to me. You knew what I would see, the things I would learn, and you gave it to me anyway. What you've done to me, it's done to me . . ."

There was a pause, and they moved through to another room. Jack held up the device switched to another bug. The bedroom. There was a rustling of sheets, then silence for a moment, before Mary spoke again.

"The device did nothing but let you see. It's always been there, Toshiko. Just because you couldn't see it before, doesn't mean it wasn't there."

"I can't stand it any more." Tosh continued, speaking to herself or Mary, he couldn't tell. 'The weight of it, the depravity. The fear . . . it fills me up. It's in my mouth, and my hair, and my eyes. Like I'm drowning in ink. I can't forget the things I've seen, the things I've heard. It's like a curse, something the gods send to drive someone mad."

There was a squeak in the background, a click and slight whoosh, a deep inhalation. So, Mary was a smoker

"I had hope. I'd see something, some little random act of kindness, and it made me think we were safe; there was some essential good in us. But there isn't. It's like one of the weevils. You look inside, and there's just this great yawning scream," she was crying now, sobbing. "And I can't be part of it any longer. I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do!"

"Get me into Torchwood."

He'd heard enough.

He called Ianto, and from the echo in his voice when the Welshman replied he could tell that he was still in the hub, despite the late hour. Not much of a surprise.

"I need you to call Owen and Gwen – tell them to get in here ASAP."

"Would you like me to call Tosh as well, sir?"

He'd had a crash-course in Iantoese over the last few months, having spent as much time as he could with him since Lisa's death, so was able to interpret this as, "Why don't you want me to call Tosh? Is she alright?"

He didn't reply to either question.

"I'm expecting a code-zero incursion at any time – tell them to get in here now!"

A/N's

-About the dialogue between Tosh and Mary - everything after "I can't stand it anymore" is from the episode, so definitely not mine! But the stuff before that, I wrote

-Please forgive the pseudo-science (the buttterfly thing) - I was ChemistryGirl and BiologyGirl in high school, not PhysicsGirl

-Unbeta'd, as always

-My eyes are killing me and I'm half asleep, so I honestly do not know if this is any good. Please comment?