When Ianto returned, day had dawned, but it was an overcast and cloudy day. It suited his mood. There was enough light to see by in the factory and he was able to grab some batting that was used for the cushions they had made there once and bring it up to the office. It would make a place for him to rest for a few hours until he met his sister, if nothing else. Opening the door to the office, he looked inside and stopped short.
"Christ," he said softly. Jack was regenerating. The thigh was now fully formed and the arm portion that had been cut looked like it was a lot bigger than he remembered. He dropped the batting on the floor, walked over to the bundle and untied it.
"Sorry, Jack," he muttered. He was having a very strange out of body experience and the urge to laugh hysterically overcame him for a few minutes. He was talking to Jack's limbs as if he could be heard. He dropped to his knees and bent over, feeling sick. He couldn't sit there while this happened. He just couldn't watch. He spread out the batting, and then placed the body parts on it to cushion them. As if it would make Jack feel more comfortable. He shook his head. Then he looked around. Time to crash for a bit. He got up and went out into the factory floor. Gathering more batting, he settled down on the floor against one of the larger machines that would shield him if anyone decided to come in while he was asleep and he lay down. He didn't feel comfortable sleeping in the supervisor's office. Not with whatever was going on in there. He shook his head, feeling a headache coming on from lack of sleep and stress. He lay down on the pile of batting and closed his eyes. It was a sign of his utter exhaustion that he was out in a matter of moments…
When he woke several hours later, it was to hear the beeping of his PDA. It was just about dead, and was giving him a low battery warning. He shut it down, as it would do him no good now. He sighed and sat up. He felt terrible. He peered at his watch and saw that he had slept about five hours. He needed to clean up, check on Jack and get to the meeting point and see if his sister was going to help him. He hoped she would. He needed her right now. He pulled off his jacket and shook the dust and dirt out of it. It was ripped in the back where he had snagged the jacket while climbing amongst the wreckage earlier that morning. He sighed and shook his head. He wandered the space and checked the bathrooms. The water was still on. He took full advantage of that, washing up as best he could, though there was no soap or supplies to really do a decent job over it. There were also no medical kits that he could see, so he was only able to daub at the cut on his cheek. He looked at his watch and cursed. He was running out of time to get to where he needed to be.
He checked in on Jack and saw that he had made some progress. Ianto watched in horrified fascination for a moment. While nothing was actively happening in front of him, he could see that there was now the hips forming as well as the beginning of the other leg. Ianto felt his stomach heave and resolutely turned away. He looked at the desk and stared at the whiteboard for a long moment, his hand on the back of his neck as he thought. He needed to leave Jack a message, just in case he didn't get back in time before he revived fully. He rooted about the desk drawers and found a whiteboard marker. It had dried out, but he went to the bathroom and added some water and soon had a faded stream of blue that he could write with. He went back to the office and wrote Jack a note.
Welcome back, CJH. It's not safe. Stay put until I can come back. I
He stared at it for a moment and shrugged. His mind couldn't cope with more than that at the moment, and hopefully Jack would pay attention and stay put until he could return. He put his jacket back on, felt he was presentable enough that he wouldn't be immediately noticed and left the factory in search of a playground…
~*~
The events over the rest of the day were a blur, from the meeting with his sister, to the borrowing of her car and laptop, to getting Jack out in relatively one piece. He hadn't thought that he would completely regenerate at the military base until he heard Jack screaming while they filled in the cell with quickcrete, or at least what he assumed was fast drying cement. His mind skittered around the little detail of the other parts of Jack he had left in the textile mill. Would they both be Jack? However would they cope with one than one of him? What would he do? He shook his head as he stared at the building through the field glasses. He'd worry about that later.
He watched as Gwen and Rhys conned their way into the base in a hearse. He knew they weren't going to get Jack out at this point, and he knew he had to come up with an alternative plan. Obviously from the movements of the soldiers, they were onto Gwen. Ianto knew he had to make his move. He crept down the hill and dodged the soldiers who were heading over to the prison barracks. Alarms were going off, which covered any noise he might make. He couldn't' worry about saving Gwen at the moment. She would just have to get herself out of whatever problem she had gotten into. His focus was Jack.
He couldn't say he was really surprised when Gwen and Rhys broke through the hole he had left behind when he had pulled the cell out of the building with the JCB. He had never been so happy about his father making him do that work experience in school at the construction firm as he was at the moment when he had to sit in the thing and get it running. His father had always been pushing him into doing different things that would get him steady work and none of them had been things he had wanted to do. He was thankful for the first time in his life for the skills he had learned though, because it allowed him to not only drive, but operate the JCB and get Jack out of there.
He made his way to the nearby quarry with only one thought in mind – free Jack. When they pulled up in Rhi's car and he saw Jack standing there, he couldn't help but grin in delight. All thoughts of the other Jack back in the warehouse escaped his head as he enthusiastically greeted Jack in the rear seat while Rhys studiously avoided looking in the rearview mirror.
"Where to?" Rhys asked. "Wherever we're going, we're going to have to get far away from here," he said. Helicopters were already overhead and he had driven the car under a grove of trees to get out of their line of sight. Once they had passed, he turned around to the two men who were wrapped in each other's arms in the back seat. He turned away. Best not to look at the moment. Gwen was peering ahead and trying to ignore the sounds from the back seat.
"We need to find out what's going on in London," Gwen said. "That's where we need to be." When there was no comment from the back seat Rhys just shifted gears and took off in that direction. It was as good as any other at the moment and they were halfway there.
It was once they were closer that Ianto gave them the directions for the old Torchwood One warehouse. Jack had fallen asleep with his head on Ianto's shoulder. He had the coat that Rhys had tossed to him earlier draped over him. It was as they were driving through the city streets that Gwen told him to stop and she got out and nicked some clothes hanging on a line that Jack would be able to wear as well as a set of garden shears that they used to pry the manacles off his wrists. By this time, he was awake. Not too thrilled about the choice of clothing, but it made Gwen and Rhys happy to see him clothed, so he wore it.
~*~
