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Toshiko lay serenely on the table, clean and robed and waiting for someone to steel themselves to begin the process of moving her to the morgue.
As Gwen and Ianto lingered at her side, each hoping the other would be able to force the inevitable words past their lips, they both turned with a guilty sense of reprieve toward a sound from above, the creak of a weight on the stair. They looked up in unison, expecting to see Jack, hoping to see Jack.
And it was Jack, but not only Jack. The limp body cradled in his arms lit a blazing white flame in Gwen's brain, a flame that flared from her mouth before she could even think about stopping it.
"Don't you dare, Jack," she spat, voice low, verging on dangerous. "Don't you dare bring him down while she's still here."
Above, Jack froze with one foot in the Hub and the other on the top step, face blank, begging only with his eyes, eyes which Gwen refused to meet. Her head shook in a wild, wordless denial, which finally burst into a babble of Welsh. Jack watched Ianto's face crumple even as he whispered urgently into Gwen's ear, but in spite of his efforts the edge of the whisper broke away to echo across the Hub and into eternity. "It's his brother."
"Gwen," Jack said, voice soft and uncertain. "Gwen, I need to…."
"Let him take care of it," Ianto muttered, under his breath but still not soft enough to escape Jack's ears. "Or do you want to?"
Gwen broke free of the encircling arms and spun to face Jack. "But he killed her," she shrieked, the volume an insult to the hush they'd cultivated for so long. "He murdered her." She turned back to Ianto, hands shifting to grasp his forearms so tightly that Jack could see the wince from where he hovered.
"And you must remember, Ianto," Gwen went on, knuckles whitening on Ianto's arms. "You know, even if he doesn't, that old saying, that a corpse will bleed in the presence of its murderer…And…..and she's got none left." Her voice tailed off into a shriek, one hand flying to cover her face in a vain effort to muffle the sobs shaking her frame.
Jack flinched as though he'd been slapped, stumbled as though he'd been pushed, staggering backwards until his legs gave way. He sagged down, down, until he was sitting on the floor, legs dangling through the railings to hang over the autopsy bay, his brother spread limply over his lap. His eyes pleaded what he dared not voice.
Ianto pulled Gwen's face into his shoulder, his own head snapping up, meeting Jack's gaze with his own, chiding, imploring.
Jack merely leaned forward until his forehead was pressed up against the railing too.
"We'll be out of your way soon," Ianto said hoarsely. "You left us to do this, Jack, so let us finish it in peace, for God's sake."
As Jack finally left, shuffling numbly like a goaded beast with his brother making his arms ache along with his heart, he caught the tail end of Ianto's comment drift along to follow him.
"Assuming there is one."
-XXX-
Tosh still lay quietly on the table, deaf to the argument flying over head. Deaf to everything.
"You go up," Gwen said tonelessly, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind Tosh's ear. "Someone should be there to meet her." And someone should be here to see her off, and that only needed the two of them, she thought bitterly, and a good thing, too, as it turned out.
Ianto's heels rang hollowly on the staircase. He could feel the eyes on him as he crossed to the entrance of the morgue and he turned as though magnetized to where Jack sat slumped on the sofa. Somewhere deep below the layers of grief Ianto knew that he ought to divert, just briefly, just long enough for a hand on Jack's shoulder. He knew, but he couldn't force his feet closer when the man who'd shot Tosh and left her to bleed out lay on Jack's lap, head tucked into his shoulder in a bizarre parody of an embrace.
Ianto reached the morgue as the gears began their tortured groan, raising Tosh from the slot in the autopsy bay. They might have carried her, Ianto thought, in the part of his brain still capable of processing thoughts, but it was fitting that Tosh's last journey be a thing of mechanics, of the technology she loved so much.
The gears ceased. Ianto's hands fumbled with the hatch door he'd opened a thousand times or more. He had a gurney waiting, covered with a fresh sheet, still smelling faintly of washing powder. He wasn't sure whether it was a selfish or selfless gesture to move Tosh before Gwen arrived, but either way there was comfort in the feel of his friend's body in his arms one last time. Even if he couldn't quite ignore the fact that she wasn't warm anymore.
Toshiko was cold, but Ianto's eyes burned.
-XXX-
Ianto did wait for Gwen before sliding Tosh into the drawer that would be her last, maybe eternal, resting place. He wouldn't have robbed Gwen of the chance for a final farewell, even if he had been able to make himself zip the bag closed over Tosh's face.
Ianto had chosen the spot carefully, but he could see the question in Gwen's eyes as she found him at the very furthest end of the morgue. A question he hoped not to have to answer, because if Gwen hadn't considered the thought that plagued him, then he didn't want to be the one who made it haunt her, too.
He should have known better. Gwen never could let a question go unasked. Or unanswered.
"I didn't even know the mor….that it went this far back," Gwen said, raising her eyes from a long contemplation of Toshiko's motionless face. "Why here, Ianto?"
Ianto swallowed. His hands fiddled with the linen over Tosh's arm, tweaking it into more perfect folds. "I thought she wouldn't be disturbed down here," he said finally, hoping Gwen would take warning enough to leave it there. But Gwen wasn't the type to back down, either.
Gwen bit her lip as a fresh pang sped through her. "She can't be disturbed anymore, Ianto," she said gently, laying a compassionate hand over Ianto's, drawing it away from the cool linen. "And wouldn't you like to visit her sometimes?"
Ianto's arm twitched beneath her touch. Gwen drew away, gesturing helplessly. "It's just, I'd thought of maybe leaving flowers. I'd like to be able to do something like that….…. but it won't be easy with her tucked away back here." Her eyes rose to meet his, skewering him with a quizzical gaze. It was obvious she knew he was hiding something, and her innate curiosity couldn't let it lie, even now.
Ianto shoved his hands into his pockets. "It won't always be me managing this facility," he said tightly.
Gwen's brows drew into a frown, stubbornness warring with compassion. Ianto sighed, finally irritated enough by her persistence to give her the answer she was determined to have, in spite of the pain he knew it would cause.
"And when it isn't me," he said slowly, willing Gwen to back off with every word, "When it isn't anyone who knew her, then I don't want Tosh too handy if someone needs...if Torchwood needs…..say….a female human of Asian appearance…." And just voicing it made him want to gag.
Gwen's whole face darkened. Yesterday, she might have protested that Jack would always be here, but that was yesterday. Today, she didn't have the faith that Jack would be here tomorrow, let alone years from now.
Silence reined in the morgue. From below came the faint sounds of movement from the medical bay, warning enough that another body would shortly be making its way up into the morgue.
Gwen's eyes lit suddenly, a light that didn't sit well with the vicious twist of her mouth. "Jack was time-locked into one of these up here, wasn't he?" she demanded, waving again at the morgue drawers. "Waiting until today so he could come back out?"
Ianto nodded. It lay in his mind like a pebble in his shoe, that Jack had been lying here, where he'd walked past him every day, with the Jack out there none the wiser, but Ianto wasn't ready to think about that yet. His head hurt quite enough already. His heart hurt worse.
"Well then," Gwen said slowly. "If Torchwood had time-locks in the 1800s, surely we could find one now?"
Ianto managed the faintest of smiles. He could indeed. He even knew exactly where. Tosh had had him dig them out months ago, after one had been used on the documents regarding Tommy, and had been gleefully cracking their secrets ever since.
Gwen kept Tosh company while Ianto hurried down to the Archives, his steps lighter than they'd been for hours. When he returned, they worked together to tuck Tosh safely away where no one would find her, with one of her own modified time-locks guarding her rest.
One more left. Needs tweaking! Thanks for reading.