4 of 14, complete
Author: veritas6_5
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: M for adult situations
Pairing: Gwen C., Jack H., Ianto J., Toshiko S., and Owen H.
Words: 2,003
Classification: After S1, slightly AU; S2, then completely off canon
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst
Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC and RTD. I mean them no harm. No copyright infringement is intended. I just take them out to play with them. I'll put them right back. Beta: karaokegal, the finest ever Wait.
Chapter 4—"It was that man."
Ianto hesitated for a long moment. Gwen had noticed that he seemed to be more at ease in the Hub, now that he was being treated equally with the team. He had relaxed the mask of the 'faithful servant' that he seemed to put on when Owen teased him. The stigma that Owen had thrust upon him, that he was shagging the boss, was pointless now with Jack gone.
Ianto stood up and paced. "I was determined to get Jack to give me this job so I could help Lisa. I loved Lisa." He made a complete circuit of the room. "I would have done anything to help her," he said, obviously revisiting the anguish. "Then there was Jack, kissing me senseless minutes after holding a gun to my head. What is it about him?" He sank back into the chair across from Gwen.
Gwen nodded her agreement. "He's different."
"I had been flirting with him for weeks," Ianto admitted. "But it was only to keep Lisa safe, and prevent him from finding her downstairs, until I could figure out how to fix her." He drew a shuddering breath. "I know how to flirt. I just didn't know what to do when he called me on it.
"I had never been involved with a man before. Never even thought of it, but I found myself loving . . . loving him." He blushed deeply. "I've been trying to remember how it started," he said.
It was the longest speech Gwen had ever heard from Ianto. He had kept himself so closed to everyone but Jack. She felt privileged that he would open up to speak about his feelings with her. "Maybe it wasn't a man, so much as it was that man," Gwen suggested gently. "Jack is awfully hard to resist when he's after something."
Ianto sighed. "It seems like it was all a dream, now that he's not here. Dealing with . . . not just the pain of missing him, but getting past it . . . actually managing to get through it makes me feel like it wasn't real. But it was—real, I mean real at the time." A strangled sob escaped his lips. "Sorry."
Gwen leaned toward Ianto, and touched his knee. "There's no need to apologise," she said. "I'm dealing with the same kind of feelings. Rhys was everything to me, but I can't wait to get his things out of our flat. I left him there alive, and then he was gone. I'm angry with myself, too, for being such an insensitive . . . idiot. I'd rather obliterate him completely from my life than deal with the loss. I feel guilty, but this is the only way I can get on with it!" Tears rolled down Gwen's cheeks. "I'm so angry! I hate him for leaving! Jack, too!" She allowed her voice to soften.. "And I'm tired of being angry all the time."
Ianto put his hand on Gwen's. "I was starting to think that I loved him, but I don't know why I loved him. I felt betrayed when he up and left us like that. How do I deal with it?"
She sniffed back more tears. "That's the question, isn't it? What will you do?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. I'm confused, lonely, empty. It's how I felt when Torchwood One was destroyed, but then I was trying to save Lisa." He smiled a small smile at her. "I could just throw myself into my work. There's always work to do."
She chuckled at him quoting Jack's 'work to do.' "Not the answer, Ianto. You need to have a life with people in it."
Ianto wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. "I'm trying to spend more time with my sister. Rhi's always been there for me, even when I tried to keep her out of my life. I'm getting to know her again, know her kids. Her husband, well, Johnny's a right guy." He laughed a little. "He never tried to turn her away from me, even after they found out about Jack."
Gwen drained her glass. "Let's call it a night."
Ianto got his coat from the rack, and headed for the cog door. "Coming?"
"Right behind you," Gwen assured him. "I've got to pick up something from the office. Night!"
She listened to be sure that Ianto was gone before she returned to Jack's (her) office. She turned off all the lights but the desk lamp, and sat at the desk, working up her courage. Her conversation with Ianto had stirred all kinds of conflict within her. She thought she had managed to put all that guilt and misery into a box, like the artefacts on Jack's desk, and put it deeply away. Now the box was open, and she just couldn't bring herself to look into it again.
Finally, for the first time since Jack had disappeared, she allowed herself to climb down the hatch entrance to the bunker. Gwen turned down the covers of Jack's bed, and slipped between the sheets. She pressed her face against the pillow where he had slept, trying to catch some vestige of his scent, soft memories of him to comfort herself, and she teared up before she fell into a fitful sleep.
Gwen thought she was doing a fairly good job of hiding herself. She cried only at night, the nights she spent in Jack's bed in the bunker. But most of the time, she felt like she was falling apart. She had to shut her office door from time to time when it became too difficult to maintain her composure. She could barely concentrate on her work, but she concealed that, too, from everyone but Ianto.
Her goal was to present a determined, almost abrupt, presence in public. She dealt with the day-to-day work, read obsessively in the archives and logs to understand more fully Torchwood's contentious history, and how that affected the present scope of their job. She cursed Jack every day, for keeping so many secrets completely to himself, and she tried desperately to keep all the elements of the work moving smoothly. Ianto kept her confidences and became very protective of her. They were a good team, but both of them were used to playing through pain.
Climbing up from the bunker, Gwen was surprised to find herself face to face with Owen, come in early for a change. "Late night?" he asked, and she could only nod. "Come along with me while I make coffee," he invited. "Unless you've done that already?" He poured big cups for both of them, and they carried the coffee back to the couch in the bottom of the Hub.
"We really need to replace this shabby old thing," Gwen started.
Owen snorted. "Do you really think I asked you here to discuss the furniture?" He looked into her face. "You look like shite, Gwen. Do you ever go home anymore, or do you always sleep here?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, come on," he said. "Are you going to tell me you just went down there for a minute, or to get some files? We all know you're sleeping here." Gwen's heart sank. She thought she had been doing a decent job of concealing that from the others. None of them had any reason to go down in the bunker, but she was careful to make it look as though Jack would return at any moment. She knew it was a crutch, but she didn't care.
"I don't want to go home anymore," she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance from Owen. "It's empty, and lonely, and . . ."
"Oh, and this is better," he said nastily. "It's so much better to stay here day and night and work yourself into exhaustion, is it?"
"There's nothing for me there. We packed all of Rhys's things away, and all the photos, and the . . . the things that reminded me of him, and now . . ." She stood up. "Here, I have work to do. And so do you."
He pulled her back to sit close to him. "We've all been watching you wreck yourself; you don't eat properly, hell, none of us do. You probably don't get enough sleep. It's been half a year. They're not coming back, but that's not a good reason to destroy yourself. I'm your doctor, for god's sake. Why didn't you ask me for help?"
She drew herself away from him again. "I don't want your help. I don't need help, Owen. I'm fine. There's just so much to do."
"You're fine?" he said. "F, fucked up; I, insecure; N, neurotic; and E, emotional. Yes, you're fine. We're your friends, Gwen, but we're also your team. You depend on us, but we also depend on you. You're not Jack, but you're going to kill yourself trying to pretend that you are."
Gwen had heard Tosh come in with Ianto, and they must have overheard part of Owen's discussion with Gwen. They came over to the couch where Gwen was now sitting on the edge. "Owen is right," Tosh said. "We care about you. We miss Jack, but we don't want to lose Gwen, too."
Owen said, "Let's get together in your office in five minutes. It's time to have a serious talk about how we're going to help you out." Owen's answer to anything was generally stomping away, Gwen reflected, but that hadn't helped him yet either.
Gwen looked up at Tosh. "I suppose you're going to lecture me too?"
Tosh laughed and patted Gwen's head. "No, but I want you to come to mine tonight. We don't want you living in the Hub."
Ianto leaned down after Tosh left, and kissed Gwen's cheek. "Let us help you, Gwen. Remember, we're in this together." He pulled her to her feet, and tucked her hand into his crooked elbow. Lately, he had seemed considerably more comfortable in his actions, freer, letting his dry wit loose in the Hub. He walked her up to the coffee machine to get a refill before they went to Owen's meeting. They carried their cups into the conference room, and he shut the door so that they wouldn't be overheard.
"I've spent a lot of time thinking since our first talk. After Jack and Rhys both disappeared, you said, about Jack, 'It was this man,' And that's what suddenly made it clear to me. It was Jack, you see, who was making you look insensitive where Rhys was concerned. There's something about Jack that made me, and you, too, vibrate. I thought I was jealous of the attention Jack paid to you, but it was actually your reaction to Jack's attention that I was resenting. Now I'm able to think more clearly."
Gwen sipped at her coffee and said, "It's like getting too close to a Catherine wheel. You want to get closer because of all the pretty colors, but you can't get too close or you'll get burned."
"Or broken," he continued. "You have to find a way to interrupt the cycle. I told you how confused I was after he left. I didn't know who I was anymore. I talked with Rhi, and she got to the heart of it. I'll tell you what's helped me a lot; more than I would have expected." He whispered a few words that were almost too soft for Gwen to catch.
