4. Lost Again
"It's not him."
Jack heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. "What do you mean, it's not him? Jack, it's the only lead I could trace anywhere. It all fits. It has to be him!"
Jack hung his head as he threw himself onto a nearby bench not far from Caernarfon Castle, staring blankly out at the waterfront, grey meeting grey, just like his mood. "I bought a historical picture book of the city from him. It's not Ianto." Never mind that the man had looked remarkably similar; everything else had been completely different, from the tenor of his voice and the northern lilt of his accent, to the slightly green shade of his eyes and his extremely diffident manner. Tristan Warlow was not Ianto Jones.
"But then how did I find this man? How is it that he looks so much like Ianto?" Tosh sounded almost desperate to understand.
"Honestly? I think Ianto may have bested you here."
Another sucked in breath. "No. He was good, but not that good."
"He laid a false trail. He knew we'd try to find him at some point, and he made sure that we would find the wrong man."
"But why would he do that?" asked Tosh, and Jack shook his head, wondering the same thing himself and coming to only one conclusion.
"Because he didn't want to be found, I suppose. I'm sorry, Tosh."
A sad, nervous laugh filled his ear. "No, I'm sorry Jack. I'm sorry I sent you all the way up there and got your hopes up."
"It's all right. At least we still have hope, right? That he's alive and happy somewhere." He closed his eyes, knowing the inevitable response.
"Because he's not dead, not by Torchwood."
"Exactly. We lost him to a better life, not a horrific death. Besides, it was a nice drive. North Wales is beautiful."
"Jack…"
"And I got a book out of it. Want it?" Again he knew the answer as soon as he asked the question.
"No, but thank you. It would only remind me…" She trailed off, unable to finish, and Jack nodded in agreement.
"Me too."
They were silent for a moment. Behind him, Jack could hear the buzz of tourists around the castle. He wondered if Ianto had ever been to Caernarfon, if that was why he had chosen it, or if he had simply happened upon a man similar enough in appearance that he had laid the false trail in hopes of further obscuring his new life.
"This would have been a good place for him," Jack murmured into the phone. "Quiet, peaceful, and far away from the Rift."
"We'll find him, Jack," Toshiko replied.
"We're not supposed to," said Jack. "If he's living a normal life somewhere like this, we shouldn't disturb that. He made his choice, and we have to respect that." It was still upsetting, though, even after so many months. Jack could say it, but he had a hard time accepting it.
Tosh didn't reply, but Jack could hear her clicking away at her keyboard in the background. Either she was continuing the search anyway, or there was Rift activity.
"When are you coming back?" she asked instead.
"No reason to stick around up here," he sighed, standing and heading toward the car park where he had left the car he'd hired for the day. "It should take me about four hours, so unless the Rift expels an army of Weevils, the rest of you can leave as soon as I'm back. I'll cover for the evening."
"All right." More clicking. "It looks like you'll have a quiet night, Jack. Are you sure you don't want any company?"
"You go home. I'll be fine." It occurred to him that perhaps Tosh wanted the company, but Jack needed to be alone after the failure of his drive up north.
"Drive carefully. We'll see you soon."
They hung up, and Jack continued toward his car. He passed a young couple looking at a map of the area and impulsively offered them the book he had purchased. They accepted it with surprised gratitude, and he smiled, thinking that at least something had gone right for someone. He didn't want the book; it would always remind him that Ianto had not moved to Caernarfon.
It wasn't long after he returned to Cardiff that the Night Travelers came through the Electro. Jack hated them. He'd failed to stop them once, and now innocent lives had been lost to them again: men, women, and children whose last breath had been taken by the mysterious phantoms Jack had trailed so long ago. That they had saved one boy was hardly a consolation; the boy was orphaned and alone.
He tried to push the thought from his head that Ianto would know exactly what to do, how to help the boy. Tosh and Owen didn't have a clue, and Gwen wanted to cuddle the kid until he stopped crying. In the end, they made contact with an aunt and uncle who took him in. Jack ensured the boy and his new family would want for nothing financially. He did the same for Jonathan Penn, whose parents had owned the Electro. It was something he knew Ianto would have done without asking, and he wanted to honor Ianto by doing it himself.
Sitting at his desk several days later and sipping a scotch, Jack wished once more that Ianto was sitting across from him. He smiled to himself as he remembered their last trip to the cinema. Ianto would have loved the Electro, and though he would have been horrified by the Night Travelers, he would have treasured the glimpse into Jack's past, as dark as it had been. Jack could almost hear Ianto asking about his experience in the traveling circus, about his old uniform; he tried not to imagine pulling it out, trying it on, taking it off…
He was distracted by Gwen bursting in, demanding an explanation for the negative rift spikes that she and Tosh had found while combing through back data. He sighed and did his best to brush her off, then stood, grabbed his coat, and told her he was going Weevil hunting. Which he did. And in spite of his agitation and annoyance, he didn't even manage to get killed once.
But Gwen wouldn't leave it, and she hounded him, pushing until he finally snapped. Ianto had known about the negative spikes and Flat Holm. Ianto had helped him bring Jonah Bevan to the island and get the man situated. Ianto had understood the need and necessity of Flat Holm and had never questioned Jack's actions, but supported him unconditionally. Gwen would never understand; in fact, it could destroy her, which was why he tried so hard to keep the secret in spite of her incessant pushing.
He wasn't trying to break her when he grabbed her by the arm after yet another heated confrontation and dragged her to the SUV, and from there to the dock, onto a boat, and into the bunker itself. He didn't enjoy seeing the look on her face as she took in the broken souls around her, and he could barely hold her as she sobbed out her anguish against his chest after she met Jonah. He wanted to run. He needed Ianto.
When Gwen insisted on taking Nikki Bevan to meet her son, Jack knew it was a mistake, but he allowed her to learn the reality of Flat Holm the hard way. And when Gwen finally broke, he picked up the pieces and sent her home to Rhys, knowing he was no longer her hero and feeling nothing like the good man he tried to be. He went back to his office, irrationally damning Ianto for leaving him alone with Flat Holm, even though Jack had bought it and built it and run it for years before sharing the secret with the one man he had trusted with it—the one man who had understood everything about it.
But as with so many things, it was not about Ianto, it was about Jack. And Torchwood. For the first time, Jack wondered how long he could stay with Torchwood without Ianto. It was a strange feeling to realize how much the man had come to mean to him, and how lost he still felt each and every day.
Life continued. The team endured. Gwen continued to fracture as she threw herself against Torchwood and lost each time; soon she would be as hard as the rest of them, and Jack grieved for her loss of innocence even as he recognized the inevitability of it. Owen continued to mourn the loss of his former life, but seemed to slowly find peace with his new half-life. In some ways, Jack envied Owen's acceptance of what Torchwood had done. Jack had reached an impasse, it seemed, forever balancing on the edge of a cliff, caught between staying and leaving, living and dying, unable to accept either.
Tosh continued to search for Ianto. She worked on several new programs, including a time lock that would protect the Hub in the case of an alien invasion. And she somehow became Owen's rock, grounding him when reality was too much to bear, when the anger flared. She was stronger than any of them, and Jack made sure to thank her daily for all she did.
And then one day everything changed, and his world ended yet again.
Jack didn't think he would survive the heartbreak. He was physically uninjured in spite of having spent two thousand years buried underground, and yet he truly thought he might die from the pain of losing both Tosh and Owen in one night. Owen had sacrificed himself to lock down the nuclear facility, and Tosh had died in Jack's arms, shot by his own brother; how was he supposed to go on after something like that?
Gwen was devastated. She had lost a friend and a former lover, but at least she still had Rhys. She left the Hub and went home to her flat, to her husband, to her ordinary life, but Jack had nothing now. He had no home, no partner, nothing. All he had was the Hub and his guilt. It was his fault, after all: his former lover, his insane brother, his fault. There was no one to tell him otherwise, and he wasn't sure he could bear it this time, not alone.
For the first time in months, Jack was irrationally glad that Ianto had left, because it spared the Welshman the pain of losing Tosh and Owen. Or Jack the pain of losing Ianto, had he been killed as well. At the same time, Jack knew that Ianto was the only one who could possibly help him get through it, move on, and survive. Ianto wasn't there to hold him and comfort him, so Jack compounded his guilt when he swallowed half of Owen's painkillers and went to sleep, knowing Ianto would have hated Jack taking his own life. But it was all he could do, for weeks, because the only hope he clung to now was that maybe the Doctor was wrong, and maybe someday Jack would not wake up.
He always did.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. Jack wouldn't call it moving on, it was more like barely hanging on by their fingertips most days. Martha Jones came to help in the aftermath of their loss, joining his broken team and bringing a tech named Jake Rogers with her from UNIT. Jack tried not to hate him, but he was everything Ianto was not. Ten years older, with ginger hair and a Scottish accent, Jake was chaos to Tosh and Ianto's methodical order. Martha had said he was the best and looking to relocate, and Gwen had approved; deep down Jack knew that Jake was a good fit for the Hub, if only Jack could stop looking at him as a replacement. Gwen had also brought Andy Davidson in as a part-time agent, and it occurred to Jack more than once that perhaps it was time to turn over the reins and leave Torchwood once and for all. He'd found the Doctor, but had come back to Earth for Ianto. Now that Ianto was gone, along with Suzie and Tosh and Owen, what did Jack have to stay for?
It was as if he were spiraling into a black hole, endlessly circling around the decision of whether to stay or go. Torchwood helped with the rebuilding of Cardiff and kept catching Weevils. They chased zombies, defeated sin-eating crustaceans, and faced more of Jack's past, while still dealing with all the other shit the Rift dropped in their laps. They even traveled a bit, helping out UNIT in Switzerland and finally destroying the remains of Torchwood India that Jack had thought he'd shut down decades ago.
Jack felt like a zombie himself most days, like a robot doing what he had been programmed to do. He barely talked to Martha, rarely talked to Gwen, and couldn't talk to the new guy at all. Life was like a waking dream, and he was simply a numb observer. He'd been doing it for over a hundred years and could do it automatically, but he didn't feel anything anymore. He couldn't. When people started turning up at the hospital in mysterious trances, Jack wondered if he was already in one. They traced it to the phones, and unthinking and uncaring, Jack picked it up when it rang.
He collapsed immediately and knew no more.
Author's Note:
There are several references to the novels and radio dramas in this chapter, including The Dead Line here at the end. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it, it's wonderful! And then hold on to your hats, because it picks up from here on out! Thank you so much for reading! Please consider leaving a note; reviews keep our hearts beating.