My first attempt at anything Torchwood. It's sure to be at least a little AU, because I've actually only seen the first 7 episodes of season 1, and only the first one of season 2. From doing a bit of online research and drawing upon my own (extremely limited) knowledge, this came into existence. I knew that 1.) John Hart was an ass in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and 2.) Jack was an ass in Cyberwoman, and really, that was all I needed. That and an educated guess that if Hart stuck around, Ianto might get just the tiniest bit territorial. (Warning: Janto-ness ahead, if you happened to not catch that.)
Someone drop me a line if you find something that needs to be changed or think something's too OOC? I'm a newbie. I'm open to critique, here.
And look out for the sequel to this, brought to you by Dark Cascade, coming soon to a computer screen near you.
Disclaimer: I just don't own anything. It's as simple as that. Not a hard concept to grasp, if you ask me. …Oddly enough, no one does much anymore.
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"Have you ever hated someone, Ianto Jones? Really hated them?"
It was a simple thing, really. Started simply enough, anyway. There was no love lost between Ianto and Captain John Hart; it wasn't exactly what anyone would call uncommon knowledge. If circumstances ever required the presence of both men in the same room for any prolonged amount of time, all of Torchwood Three switched immediately to alert mode, and suddenly became very conscious as to what subject matter was breached in conversation. Jack was not mentioned at all, if it could be helped. It was inevitable that someone would get territorial, and territorial always lead to confrontational.
This time, it was that Ianto had the bad luck to be sitting in on a team meeting that Hart had talked his way into somehow. Jack was actually present in the room at the time, and that was enough to set the two men off almost immediately. It started with Ianto asking John if he actually thought killing in the name of revenge was perfectly morally justifiable, or if he was just trying to impress them all with his own unique brand of tortured heroics (after a particularly arrogant and flippant remark made by Hart, so he had had it coming), and John replying that he did indeed think so, because hatred, once introduced into the mind, was really a mental illness and could make even a perfectly sane man do things he'd never even think about otherwise.
Ianto, despite coming off as rather mild-mannered and quiet most of the time, could almost always hold his own in a word war. He could access a perfect balance of dry sarcasm and wit that allowed him to escape most any sort of conversation unscathed and unaffected. The reason for this was that his mouth moved before his mind had a chance to catch up a good percentage of the time, and Ianto had found that his mouth had much cleverer things to say than anything his mind ever came up with.
While completely winging it came in handy sometimes, it also happened that he dug himself into holes too deep for him to successfully crawl out of, on occasion. He realized a split second after it was out of his mouth that this was going to be one of those remarks that he was going to wish he could take back.
"The only person I've ever really hated is the one I currently love, because I'm just fucked-up like that, Hart. What about you?"
He had meant it to come out sounding offhand and dismissive. What he realized, a second after saying it, was that you couldn't just toss a comment like that out there and not expect it to be extensively analyzed.
Seeing the inevitable unspoken question in Gwen, Owen, Tosh and Jack's gazes, he decided to try his very best to downplay the possible meaning behind the crippling comment and looked away from Hart, rolling his eyes as if to say I don't have time for this. After a moment, the rest of the team resumed talking about the case with renewed vigor, trying to ignore the subtle discomfort they saw on Ianto's face as he realized the implications of what he had just said.
Jack didn't so much as glance Ianto's way the rest of the night.
A week and a half after his thoughtless comment, and Ianto had all but forgotten. He had had an idea that Jack had, too, but he should have known by now not to think he could decipher the enigmatic being that was Jack Harkness.
Tosh was sitting at her computer, typing at a blinding pace and glancing at the external CCTV monitors at regular intervals. Owen and Gwen were sitting on the couch, drinking coffee and arguing over some random thing or other. Ianto was sitting at the table, looking over some old files, thinking that he should probably re-file them again if they were going to be of any use to anybody in the near future. Jack especially had a real issue with filing; he took a file out of cataloging and it would still be sitting on his desk, forgotten, six months later.
None of them had any idea where Jack was, which wasn't unusual. They were lucky if they knew where he was a half the time. The man kept odd hours and had bizarre pastimes; they had long since accepted that Jack Harkness (which wasn't even his real name, to prove a point) was, in all likeliness, going to remain a mystery to them for the foreseeable future. It didn't bother them much anymore.
Hours passed, and since Jack still hadn't shown up and there were no pressing matters to attend to, Owen, Tosh and Gwen slowly filtered out, with orders for Ianto to call them back if something came up, figuring there was really no need to stick around the Hub as long as nothing was happening. Ianto was grateful for the silence and solitude. Working at Torchwood as long as he had had taught him to cherish the rare moments of peace he could manage to squeeze out of the day.
Nothing came up, and after trying valiantly to cleanse Jack's desk of files for a few hours (he got about halfway through and decided life was too short), he was curled on the sofa in his boss's office with a book and a cup of tea, reluctant to head back to his flat alone. Again. As much as he wouldn't ever admit it to the few friends he had (and only to himself occasionally and subconsciously), this wasn't what he wanted. When he had been young, he wasn't expecting to have lost almost everyone he cared about, be living in a townhouse flat alone, and have an almost completely non-existent social life because he worked for a secret alien hunting organization that he couldn't talk to anyone about. All by the time he was 26. But, like it or not, it was his life, and even if he had wanted to, he couldn't change it now. He practiced that age-old self deception trick called acceptance, and sometimes it even worked for him.
He hadn't meant to nod off right there on the couch, but one moment he had been looking at the clock above his head and thinking he should really get home while there was still time for a decent night's sleep in his own bed, and the next someone was poking him in the side hard and whispering his name softly. He opened one eye slowly and saw Jack standing in front of him with one eyebrow raised, probably wanting to know why Ianto looked as if he had decided to take up permanent residence on his couch.
Before his boss could make some sort of sexual innuendo or kick him out, Ianto sat up, both men wincing as his neck snapped unnaturally loudly.
Standing up now and idly wondering where his book and tea had disappeared to, he cleared his throat and headed for the office door, accidentally reverting to old habits as a result of being caught off-guard and half asleep in a place he wasn't really supposed to be in the first place, "Sorry, sir. I was just…filing. Doing some late-night filing. I was just headed out, actually."
Jack threw himself into his desk chair and looked at the mounds of un-filed files still residing on his desk.
"Ianto, how many times have I told you…', and Ianto paused, expecting at the very least a lecture on the long hours Jack enjoyed getting on his case about, "You do not, under any circumstances… call me sir. Ever. We've been though this. It's Jack, Harkness, Jack Harkness, or Honeybuns. Got that?"
Still not turning around, he tried his best not to let Jack hear the grin in his voice and said "I don't know if Owen or Hart would appreciate pet names on the job. Owen would gag and Hart would get jealous."
"Even more jealous than he is now, d'you think? I don't know if that's even physically possible, but I suppose we could try-"
"Goodnight, Jack, unless there's something else you needed?"
Not waiting for an answer, Ianto started to make his way out of the Hub once again, hoping his boss would let him at least get out of his office before calling him back to make another innuendo, random comment, or request.
He didn't quite get that far. "One thing."
There was a long pause, and after a few minutes, Ianto started to think about continuing his journey out of the Hub. Even for Jack, the master of Pause for Dramatic Effect, it was starting to stretch into an abnormally long time lapse.
He didn't stop to think it may have been because Jack was afraid of the answer to his own question.
Ianto stood there a moment longer before shaking his head and starting to walk away, for what felt like the umpteenth time since he had been woken up.
He had almost made it past the water tower and to the Sidewalk when Jack's question finally broke the silence. "When did you ever hate me?"
The answer really mattered. Ianto could hear it in his voice that he had been mulling it over ever since it had been voiced a week ago, and it had finally come perilously close to haunting him.
He felt bitterness rise up to his throat, making his breath hitch. He realized, not for the first time, that he wasn't over it. He wasn't even close to getting over it.
The bitterness manifested itself in his voice, like he knew it would. "You remember Lisa?" It wasn't a question, and they both knew it. He heard Jack take a deep breath behind him, and then he heard, "I'm sorry, Ianto. In…retrospect, I probably could have handled that situation better. I know you loved her, and I'm sorry that-"
Ianto spun around then, efficiently cutting his boss off and allowing him to see the raw emotion in his eyes. He knew it would be the emotion that would hurt Jack more than the words. He hoped, anyway. "No, you're not. And you weren't. Even back then, you might have felt a bit remorseful, a bit regretful, a bit guilty…actually, I know you did. But you were never … genuinely… sorry. I could see it, and that's why I hated you," He paused to let this sink in and gain back full control of his voice, "And it's why I still hate you."
He didn't linger long enough to see how much he had hurt his boss, friend, lover, murderer. Ianto wasn't sure which one was more fundamentally correct anymore.
He just walked away.