Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Torchwood'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.
A/N: The conclusion of Cyberwoman.
Synchronicity
Chapter Seven: Too Well
3 November, 2006
20:47
"What the fuck're we gonna do?" Owen asked, his panic from being trapped within the conversion unit still very much in evidence.
"I don't know," Jack replied, wishing he had a spare hand. He was carrying Jenny with one arm under her knees and the other wrapped around her shoulders. Don't dare try a fireman's carry, not without knowing if there's more wrong than her arm. Owen was a half-step behind and to his left. Ianto was a half-step ahead and to his right. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about Jones… Not if what I suspect is right.
The three of them halted as the Cyberwoman appeared at the end of the corridor. Owen raised his gun, but she simply stared at them before moving on. "Come on," he said, taking a single step. It was enough to un-freeze Ianto and Owen. "Let's get back to the Hub."
It didn't take as long to reach the main level as Jack had feared; they didn't run into the Cyberwoman again, which had been Jack's main concern. "Tosh! Get everything from the weapons room, fast as you can!" he called out, carrying Jenny down to the med-bay. "Owen – see what you can do," he laid the girl down on the table. "Quickly."
"Don't need to tell me twice," Owen replied, wasting no time at all in switching on the battery-backup for his favored scanner. With the main power down, he wouldn't be able to project the readings on the wall, but the machine had a perfectly serviceable screen attached.
As soon as he was no loner encumbered by ninety pounds of blonde, Jack retrieved his Webley from its holster and grit his jaw as he strode back to where Ianto was standing near the lift. Tosh's voice echoed down to him, "It's locked down. There's no manual override."
"Just open the store," Jack yelled back, then cocked his gun and leveled it at Ianto. "On your knees," he ordered, "hands above your head." Acting as though he were on autopilot, Ianto followed Jack's instructions.
Tosh stumbled to a dead stop a few feet away. "Jack?"
"I gave you an order, Tosh," Jack didn't bother looking her way. "Did you know that thing was down there?"
From the medical bay, Owen could hear what was going on. He desperately wanted to see it, but focused on his patient instead. The scanner finished its job and he let out a small breath of relief – the scan was nearly identical to the one he'd run when she'd been recovering from the psychic attack of the entity that had invaded the girl who'd exploded, and the only physical damage it picked up on was to her arm. He moved the scanner and changed its settings to check exactly what was going on with her injury.
"I put her there," Ianto stated, wondering what had gone wrong.
Jack's finger tightened on the trigger. "You hid a Cyberman within Torchwood and you didn't tell us!?" I will not shoot. I will not shoot. Not until I have the answers I need. I will not shoot. "What else are you keeping from us?"
The scanner revealed what he had suspected – Jenny's shoulder was badly dislocated, her humerus all but crushed at the end connecting to her elbow. Owen shut the machine off and ran a hand through his hair. "What a fucking mess. Do I do for you as I'd do for Tosh or anyone else? You never said. Honestly, I didn't ask. Didn't think. Thought that body armor of yours protected you from physical injury." Owen closed his eyes and silently pushed away the indecision. "No worse than A&E. Same problems. Focus, Harper." Opening his eyes, he got to work.
Jack could see anger beginning to boil up in Ianto. "What else!?" he shouted.
"Like you care," Ianto spat it at him. "I clear up your shit, no questions asked, and that's the way you like it. When did you last ask me anything about my life?"
Jack ignored the stab of guilt that question generated. "Why didn't you tell us?" he pressed.
"Torchwood exists to destroy alien threats. Lisa is my girlfriend – why would I tell you about her?"
"A little loyalty, perhaps?" Owen shouted from the med-bay, filling a syringe while attempting to keep his emotions at bay.
"My loyalty's to her!" Ianto shouted back. "She worked for Torchwood. She was caught up in battle. I owe it to Lisa – we owe it to her – to find a cure!"
Owen shook his head. "Deluded," he muttered. Using a pair of scissors, he cut Jenny's t-shirt away from her damaged shoulder and arm, revealing the dull greenish-grey body armor she wore underneath. "You wake up, Blondie, and we're gonna have words about this inconvenient bit of clothing of yours," he said, eyeing the neckline. It exactly followed the line of where her t-shirt fit. The bit of his brain that wasn't actively engaged with the task at hand finally realized why the suit was called a 'Second Skin' – it looked as though it had been painted on. "Come on, this has to be injected in the injury… Think, think…" He cast his mind back over the conversations he'd overheard when Jenny and Tosh had been discussing the suit.
"Ianto," Jack tried, he really did, to keep most of his fury out of his voice, trying to will him to believe what he had to say. "You have to believe me, there is no cure. There never will be. Those who are converted stay that way. Your girlfriend will not be the exception."
"You can't know that for sure," Ianto argued, but something in his voice told Jack he was fighting the truth of the situation, desperately clinging to hope.
"Look," Jack replied, the tension on his trigger relaxing. "You need to know what's happening here, because this is where these things start: Small decisions that become mass slaughter. These creatures regain a foothold by exploiting human weakness. Then they take a base, rebuild their forces, and before you know it, the Cyberrace is spreading out across the universe, erasing worlds, assimilating populations. All because of the tiny beginnings here. We need to stop her."
Owen heard the lecture, but didn't pay it any mind. The word 'cyber' bounced into his memories of the suit-discussions, and exploded into a sudden realization. "Got it! Directed EMP ought to shut it down." He sat the syringe on his tray of instruments, then all but ran for Tosh's workstation. "Where is it, where is it," he rummaged through the technologies scattered around her computer; the tech expert kept a small handheld unidirectional EMP generator on hand to shut down any bits of technology in emergency situations. "Ah! Gotcha, you little bugger!" He sprinted back to the med-bay.
"You're not listening to me," Ianto pleaded. "The conversion was never completed."
"She already tried to kill Jenny. Tried to upgrade," Jack said the word with extreme distaste, "Owen. You think she's gonna stop there? There's no turning back for her now."
Owen aimed the torch-shaped generator at Jenny and clicked the button to fire it. A high-pitched whine sounded, then a nearly-silent clicking noise. He exchanged the generator for the syringe. "Hope that worked," he muttered. He needn't have worried – it was obvious once he stood next to the table that it had. Jenny's body armor no longer fit quite so exactly. In addition, the neckline and exposed sleeve had retracted into a configuration Owen thought matched a swimming suit, the kind worn by competitive divers. "Good enough," he said, injecting the medication he'd mixed into the misshapen dislocation.
"I'm not giving up on her," Ianto said. "I love her. Can you understand that, Jack? Haven't you ever loved anyone?"
Jack resisted the urge to argue with him. Now is so very not the time to get into that. "You need to figure out whose side you're on here, because if you don't know, you're not going to make it out of this alive."
Tosh, slightly out of breath, skidded back into the Hub. "There's no way the weapons store's gonna open," she said. "And it's gonna take six hours for the power to come back online."
"Let me talk to her," Ianto paid no attention to Tosh. "I can still save her. Save us all. She's not a monster."
Owen managed to pop Jenny's shoulder back into place. The lower half of her humerus, however, was beyond what he could do in the med-bay, particularly with the primary power offline. He splinted it, noting in passing that the crushed bone was directly beneath a black bruise exactly in the shape of a handprint, then secured her injured arm to – hopefully – keep either injury from getting worse… And just in time.
The heavy, distinctive tread of hydraulic-assisted bootsteps echoed through the Hub.
SCANNING STRUCTURE…
EXTRAPOLATING WEAKNESSES…
SCAN COMPLETE
92% FAVORABLE CONDITIONS
"The army will be rebuilt from here. This building is suitable."
"Who are you?"
"Human point two."
"So how come you look like human point one?"
ERROR
QUERY ILLOGICAL
"I do not understand."
"Look at yourself. Go ahead."
"Remember, Lisa. Remember who you are."
SCANNING REFLECTIVE IMAGE
IMAGE: CYBERFORM FAILSAFE 6
IMAGE LOGICAL
RUNNING SITUATION DIAGNOSTIC… 100%
BIOLOGICAL UNITS OPERATING ON ASSUMPTION UPGRADE INCOMPLETE
RUNNING SCENARIO PROJECTIONS… 100%
"The upgrade is incomplete."
"You're still human."
SECOND CYBERFORM NEEDED TO BRING PROJECTED SUCCESS RATE ABOVE 90%
"I am disgusting. I have – I am wrong."
"We can help you."
"I must start again. Upgrade properly."
"For god's sake, have you heard yourself? Lisa, please. I brought you here to heal you. So we could be together."
QUERY: CYBERFORM FAILSAFE 6B (HUMAN DESIGNATION: IANTO JONES) COMPATIBLE FOR UPGRADE
SCANNING CYBERFORM FAILSAFE 6B (HUMAN DESGIGNATION: IANTO JONES)
BIOLOGICAL UNIT COMPATIBLE
REASSIGNING DESGIGNATION CYBERFORM FAILSAFE 6B (HUMAN DESIGNATION: IANTO JONES) TO STATUS: VALID FOR UPGRADE
"Together. Yes. Transplant my brain into your body. The two of us together. Fused. We'll be one complete person. Isn't that what love is?"
ERROR
QUERY: LOVE
ERROR
RUNNING SELF-DIAGNOSTIC…
"No."
"Then we are not compatible."
ALERT: HOSTILE ENTITY
INITIALIZING NEURTRALIZATION PROCEDURE
THREAT NEUTRALIZED
"Code nine maneuvers, go!"
SELF-DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE
DAMAGE DETECTED IN BIOLOGICAL PROCESSING UNIT
CAUSE: PROJECTILE IMPACT TO CRANIAL ARMOR
ALERT: DAMAGE SPREADING, CORRUPTION TO ALL DATA FILES IMMINENT
INITIALIZING EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS
Thinking on his feet had always been Jack's specialty. The beginnings of a plan coalesced as he, Tosh, and Owen managed to pause for breath in the conference room. "This is a fight to the death," he said, "we do whatever is necessary to destroy her. Forget what Ianto said. That thing is not human. Clear?"
"No arguments from me," Owen replied, glancing through the windows to the level below.
Jack handed Tosh a small remote-like device. "What's this?" she asked.
"Something Suzie scavenged last year – you were out sick that week. Said it could open any lock. I want you out the exit gates," Jack grabbed a pair of capacitors that helped regulate the energy feed to the safe in his office while speaking, "and up the emergency stairs to reception."
"She'll never open that door without power – it weighs a ton." Owen glanced at Jack, then went back to staring out the windows.
"It's balanced – she can move it," Jack said, handing the cylindrical capacitors to Tosh as well.
"I'm not leaving you here!" Tosh objected.
"Just do as I say, both of you. Once you're in reception, pull the panel next to the desk. Take circuit 357 from the main system and patch it to those – they should have just enough power for what we need. Once the main circuit goes live, get out. Meet us by the water tower."
"What about Jenny? Is she…"
Owen shook his head. "No, she's alive. Hurt, but alive. She's likely safer than we are right now, though. That thing said she wasn't compatible. As long as it doesn't get it in its head to scan her brainwaves, she should be fine where she is."
"Tosh! Go!" Jack gently, but firmly, pushed her towards the door, then turned to his medic. "You find anything that even resembles a weapon."
"What're you gonna do?"
"Buy you some more time. Go!" The Cyberwoman marched past the conference room doors just as Owen sprinted out. "Hey!" Jack shouted at her. "Lisa. It is Lisa, isn't it?" The Cyberwoman halted and turned to Jack, then marched into the room. "You've been hiding in my basement. That's okay. Draining my power," Jack maneuvered himself to keep the table between himself and the Cyberwoman, "I can live with that. But now you're starting to hurt my friends. This is gonna stop!" What are you doing? This has got to be right on top of the list for 'stupidest stunts you've ever pulled'. Jack pushed the thoughts away and ducked out of the room, hoping that he could keep the Cyberwoman distracted from his team.
He stopped when he reached the main level, waiting for the Cyberwoman to catch up. He didn't have long to wait. She marched away from the stairs and said, "This building belongs to me now. You will all be deleted."
A string of profanity – oddly not in Galactic Standard, not in Boeshanian, nor even in English, but Latin, of all things – flashed across Jack's brain. This is gonna hurt. He took a step in the Cyberwoman's direction. "I'm sorry for what they did to you, but this ends here." The Cyberwoman reached up and grabbed his shoulder.
Owen halted at Jack's scream, something in him cringing in both terror and macabre fascination at what the intruder was doing to his boss. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tosh open the gate surrounding the cogwheel door before pressing the alien-lockpick against the cog itself. "Come on, can't help him," Owen tried to convince his feet to move, but couldn't. The Cyberwoman let Jack drop and turned to march after Tosh.
Jack pushed himself up off of the ground. "That all you got?" he yelled at the Cyberwoman. "I'm not so easily deleted."
"How the hell…?" Owen wondered, but seeing the captain up and about managed to get his feet moving. He sprinted for the med-bay. A scream identical to the one from moments earlier told Owen that the intruder had tried to 'delete' Jack again.
I hate electrocution, Jack managed one coherent thought before the second dose of 'deletion' had him blacking out. As he gasped his way back to consciousness, the thought continued, but at least it never takes long to come back from it. The familiar thrum of an overabundance of energy settled on him. No physical damage to speak of, so either I go around reviving dead houseplants for a week or I figure out how to drain off the excess in one go. He looked around and didn't see the Cyberwoman, though he could hear her marching off in the direction of the med-bay. I hope Owen was right about Jenny being safe.
His eyes landed on Ianto. Should work. He pulled Jones out of the pool. Ianto wasn't breathing, but his pulse was still running – fast, like the heartbeat of a mouse – but still there. I still reserve the right to shoot you if this all goes south, Jack thought, then poured off the excess energy into Ianto. He could feel the energy focus itself on repairing Ianto's crushed throat. Jack nudged the energy and Ianto gasped, waking. Jack quickly shushed him.
Back in the med-bay, Owen had grabbed a chisel from his autopsy kit and was backing his way around the circular room, trying to keep the Cyberwoman in front of him. He nearly tripped over the stairs as they hit the backs of his feet, but he didn't. Though Owen didn't particularly want to, he turned around and sprinted up the stairs, across the walkway, and into the main Hub.
"You should be dead!" Owen said, coming to a halt behind Jack.
"I'm the stubborn type," Jack quipped, lighting Suzie's plasma-cutter. The Cyberwoman stomped her way into view, stopping when she saw Jack. "That's right, stay back," he ordered. "This'll at least give you heartburn."
"The fuel will run out. I can wait."
Ianto leaned towards Jack. "Help her, Jack. Give her a chance to surrender."
Owen blinked at him. "Have you not seen what she's done?"
"Let her stay in the cells. We have to reverse the process."
And so much for reason managing to take the lead. Perhaps I should've shot him – it would've been kinder, if harder to explain to the others. "Owen, hold him back."
Owen glanced down and realized they were practically on the invisible lift. He reached out and grabbed Ianto, pinning the taller man's arms to his sides while Jack grabbed a squeeze-bottle and sprayed its contents all over the Cyberwoman. He then turned off the plasma-cutter and dropped it, hopping on the lift with Ianto and Owen. "I'm sorry," he said, looking to Ianto as he raised his wrist and typed a quick command.
"You'll kill her!" Ianto yelled, trying to wriggle out of Owen's grasp. Jack lent a hand in keeping the Welshman on the platform. Come on, Tosh. Hurry up. Myfanwy screeched, then swooped out of her lair, arrowing straight for the Cyberwoman. "Let me go! You'll kill her! Let me help her!" Ianto redoubled his efforts to get away.
Jack was sorely tempted to knock him out, but knew it wouldn't do much good – Ianto, though he likely had no clue about it, was still flooded with the excess healing energy Jack had drained into him. "Hold still!" he ordered instead, knowing it wasn't likely to be obeyed. Thankfully, the lift began to rise and Ianto's sense of self-preservation kicked in; instead of physically struggling, he switched his efforts to words.
Jack tuned him out and waited for the lift to deposit them outside. Okay, now what? Away and alive are both good and valid goals, but what do I do about the Cyber-freak in my house? Myfanwy's screeching cut through his thoughts. Sorry girl, but better you than my team. Have to figure out how to get Jenny out of there, too. Really, really hope Owen's right and that the Cyberwoman isn't interested. The lift had almost reached the Plass when Jack was struck with an idea. Oh, you're stupid sometimes, aren't you? He took a steadying breath and closed his eyes. :Jenny! You gotta wake up! Know it's gonna be painful, but I could really use your help right now. Wake up!:
The lift ceased its upward movement and Tosh's voice called across the Plass, "It worked! What happened to –"
Ianto shrugged off Jack and Owen, spun in a tight circle, and punched Jack with all of his strength. "You could have saved her! You're worse than anything locked up down there," he shouted at Jack. Jack's brain reeled both from the punch and the sudden snapping of the telepathic connection to Jenny. Ianto continued his rant, "One day, I'll have the chance to save you and I'll watch you suffer and die!"
Jack wiped blood from his split lip and gathered his wits. "It was the only thing that would stop her!"
Tosh interrupted them both. "Listen! While I was in reception, I managed to trip the lockdown timer. The power should be coming back on any second – we can get back in."
Ianto wasted no time in sprinting for the tourist office.
Jenny was rushing things. Taking shortcuts. But I have to. I can fix it later. There was a Cyberform in the Hub. She had to rush. Even though they don't like me, they can still upgrade Tosh. Dr. Gormless. Could they upgrade Jack? Would he be 'compatible'? Focus, Jenny – save the sick questions for later.
She managed to mitigate the potential nerve damage and had moved on to patching crushed blood vessels when Jack's voice blared across her mind.
: Jenny! You gotta wake up! Know it's gonna be painful, but I could really use your help right now. Wake up!:
She checked her work. It'll do. It'll have to do. Come back to it later. She opened her eyes to find they'd moved her to the medical bay. Looking down at herself, she saw that someone had splinted her arm, reduced the dislocation, and tied it at a diagonal across her chest. She also noticed that someone had hit her Second Skin with an EMP – it had reverted to 'factory default'.
Owen. It had to have been Owen. She could feel a cocktail of miscellaneous drugs coursing through her. Don't seem to be doing any damage, she assessed, deciding not to take the time to figure out exactly what they were. First things first. Jenny grabbed her MPEA from it's holster on her belt, pausing to blink as her eyes adjusted to the sudden reintroduction of light. Main power's back online. She rebooted the MPEA, then instructed it to reset her Second Skin to its normal configuration – t-shirt neckline, long sleeves, and so on.
With that out of the way, she followed her ears and peeked out into the Hub – the Cyberwoman was fighting with a giant lizard-bird. What the hell is that? She reached for her neutron pistol only to find it wasn't in her holster. Damn! Must have dropped it.
While searching for a decent replacement weapon, the lizard-bird let out a growling high-pitched cry. The flutter of wings faded from the immediate vicinity. One less possible threat to deal with, Jenny thought, dismissing the mess of various tools Owen used during autopsies.
The sound of the cogwheel door flooded her with relief. At last, a little backup. Until she heard an unfamiliar woman's voice say, "Bloody hell. Ianto? Do you want these or not?" The distinctive sound of a Cyberform's footsteps preceded, then drowned out, a shrill scream.
Jenny peeked around the wall and spotted the Cyberform dragging a girl in jeans towards the stairs. She closed her eyes, took a breath, then resumed her search for a weapon. She'd just dismissed the possibility of using the plasma-cutter – it was too bulky with too short a reach – when the cogwheel door opened once more.
Ianto stepped through, slightly worse for wear from the last time she'd seen him. "Ianto!" she hurried over to him. "Are you alright? Where's everyone else?" She reached up with her good arm and gently moved his head to look at her. "Ianto!"
He blinked. "What?"
"What. Is. Going. On?"
"Lisa," he said, eyes drifting back to survey the debris scattered around the Hub. "She's not well – they, Jack. Doesn't understand."
Her injured arm made a valiant try to distract her by throbbing. She closed her eyes and shunted the pain-signals to a delay. Not now. "What?" she addressed Ianto. "Who's Lisa? What doesn't Jack understand?"
"She can be saved, I know it!" Ianto insisted.
Several things clicked into place. "Blessed Vot and her Sixteen Mistresses of Chaos," Jenny breathed. "No, Ianto – no." She took the gun he held loosely by his side and tucked it in her belt, then grabbed his wrist and tugged him over to a chair. He sat without seeming like he'd meant to. "Listen to me, Ianto, please. That Cyberform downstairs – is that Lisa?"
Ianto nodded. "It wasn't complete – there has to be a way to save her."
"That's what they wanted you to think, Ianto. I saw them use the same tactic on Baetulin Nine. The Cyberforms found themselves on the losing side of a battle, so they created failsafe Cybers – they upgraded people, but left their faces exposed. Let the failsafes keep a simulation program for emotional manipulation, too. It was… Way more effective than it should have been. The two failsafes from Baetulin Nine were shipped to Xadriikash, to the hospital there – that hospital had a reputation as the absolute best for patients with mechanical issues, anything from rogue nanites to a malfunctioning neural implant to… Well, suffice it to say, they were the best. Two months after the Cyberform failsafes were admitted as patients, the hospital fell to a fresh wave of Cyberforms. Xadriikash was imploded three days later to stop them from spreading to neighboring planets. If the best efforts of the best hospital for ten galaxies in the year 6012 – that's four thousand years in the future – couldn't help, what makes you think a society not even a hundred years from the discovery of basic antibiotics can do anything to help?"
"Why should I believe you?"
"I was on Baetulin Nine, Ianto – one of the failsafes they picked was my partner at the time, Sha'drik Tu Liskant. We were supposed to be retrieving the stolen plans for a new type of transmat – that's a teleportation device, by the way – but got caught with Cyberforms on one side, Judoon on another, and the Baetulins on the third."
"Daleks, Cybermen, and Torchwood," Ianto mumbled, his eyes shifting out of focus.
Jenny reached up and untied the bandages holding her left arm in place. Gingerly, not wanting to disturb the pain-shunt she'd placed on herself, she removed the splint. Next, she retrieved her MPEA and slid the input/output wireless transmission rod from its slot. "Hold this," she said, handing the MPEA itself to Ianto. He took it, but his eyes were still vague and distant. She punched a quick series of commands into it, then ran the rod around her left wrist, synching it to the Second Skin. As she trailed the rod up her arm, the sleeve retracted. When it met up with the neckline of her body-armor, the two melded, revealing her bruised and damaged shoulder and arm. She slid the rod back into its slot, took the MPEA, and returned it to her holster. "Look, Ianto."
By degrees, Ianto's eyes refocused and slid over to her. He winced at seeing the black handprint bruise above her elbow.
"Would your Lisa have done this to anyone?"
"No," Ianto croaked the word, closing his eyes.
"But she did. What does that tell you?"
Tears formed in his eyes. "No," he repeated, but Jenny could see he was starting to get it.
She handed him the gun back. "There's only one way to save her, Ianto."
His fingers closed around the gun and he nodded. He stood, then looked around the room. "Where –"
"Downstairs, to the room with the conversion unit, I would assume."
As if on cue, the lights overhead began to flicker. Ianto sprinted down the corridor to the stairs.
Jenny collapsed onto the chair Ianto had just vacated, her pain-shunt disintegrating. Sweat popped into beads on her forehead. Breathing through her teeth, she attempted to re-shunt the nerves, closing her eyes to shut out unnecessary distraction.
A clatter of footsteps interrupted her concentration. "Jenny! You alright?" Jack's voice was both welcome and irritating.
"Been better," she replied through clenched teeth.
"Owen."
"Downstairs," Jenny managed. "Ianto – the Cyberform. Downstairs."
Two pairs of feet hurried away while Owen knelt next to her. "Come on, Blondie – let's get you patched up."
Over the course of the next five minutes, Owen worked with significant input from Jenny to mix a more effective painkiller from the various chemicals he had on hand. He was just about to inject it when a single gunshot, muted by distance, echoed up from the direction of the stairs. Owen glanced in the direction it came from, but quickly returned to his patient.
Once the syringe was empty, Jenny laid back on the table and waited for it to kick in. "'I pray you, in your letters, when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak of one that lov'd not wisely but too well.'"
"What're you on about?"
"Othello, the Moor of Venice," Jenny replied. "Act five, scene two. It's from Othello's monologue before he kills himself."
"Ianto?"
Jenny nodded.
Owen scoffed. "If he's anyone from that play, I woulda said Iago. Manipulative little shit."
"Nope. That would be the Cyberform. Lisa, of course, was Desdemona." She turned her head to look at the doctor. "Surprised you know it well enough to cast the characters at all – even if you are wrong in who fulfilled which roles."
"Required reading," he replied. "Fifth form, I think. We went over that one, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Hated all three."
"Why does that not surprise me?" Jenny asked, rhetorically. She closed her eyes to forestall any further argument. After a couple of measured breaths, she slipped back into her interrupted healing trance.
An hour after the Cyberwoman was no longer a threat, Ianto sat on the sofa underneath the Torchwood painted on the white brick wall. He wasn't doing anything, just breathing. Not thinking, not processing, not even quietly panicking. Just sitting. Staring into the middle distance, but not at any one thing in particular. Some level of himself not wrapped up in wondering why he suddenly felt scooped hollow was aware he likely was in some form of shock. He couldn't even remember how he came to be on the sofa in the first place.
"Jones," Jack's voice cut through his numbness, making him startle slightly. "My office."
Ianto had never heard that particular tone of voice from their resident leader before. Commanding, certainly, but there's something else there… Not flirtiness, not this time. Something else I can't place. Disappointment? Perhaps, but it doesn't sound like Dad used to. Something… He looked down and found his feet had carried him to the doorway of Jack's office.
"Sit," Jack ordered, indicating the small armchair that normally took up a corner and supported a stack of unsorted files. Jack had moved it to sit facing his desk. The man himself was leaning against the desk.
Still functioning on autopilot, Ianto crossed the room and perched on the edge of the ugly old armchair. Jack shifted, revealing the cut-glass decanter of expensive Scotch whiskey that typically lived, untouched, in the liquor cabinet. One of the matching tumblers was polished to a sparkling finish and sitting next to it. Realization dawned and panic finally wormed its way into being; his heart began thundering loudly in his ears and he could feel a cold sweat prickle between his skin and the cotton and wool armor he habitually wore. "No," he breathed, his voice almost completely powerless.
Jack frowned as he poured a splash of the honey-colored liquor into the glass. "No?"
"Don't make me forget," Ianto managed, his voice cracking horribly on the last word as his throat seized. He looked through blurry eyes up at the man he'd attempted to deceive. "Don't make me forget her. Please." His voice gained a little strength even as the rest of him seemed to suddenly dissolve into nerveless goo. "Please."
Understanding crossed his boss' face and it seemed to Ianto that Jack would have cracked a smile had the situation been any less dire. "No," he said, returning the stopper to its place. "Not gonna retcon you." He took a small sip from the glass, then pressed it into Ianto's hands. "See? Just some really good booze."
His hands were shaking badly enough it took both of them to keep from dropping the glass. "Why?" was all he could manage.
Jack sighed and returned to leaning against the desk. "Because you set it right. Because you loved her."
Some of the confusion Ianto felt at that must have managed to fight its way through the panic to show on his face. "Sir?"
Jack cleared his throat, then ran a hand through his hair. Ianto recognized Jack's stalling tactics, but further knew that since he'd called this meeting, all he need do was wait for him to work around to what he wanted to say. After nearly five minutes, during which a small portion of Ianto's panic managed to fade – enough that he no longer threatened the longevity of the glass tumbler – Jack finally spoke. "About a hundred years ago," he started, his tone falling somewhere short of the usual stories he bandied about, "I was married. Did you know that?"
Ianto couldn't speak, so he just shook his head a fraction. Married? Jack? Jack Harkness, king of meaningless one-night stands? Married? The word didn't belong within a fifty-mile radius of the man Ianto had come to know during his tenure at Torchwood Three. The timeframe Ianto simply chalked up to typical Jack-style hyperbole.
"Matilda," Jack said the name with a level of reverence that was more than just a little out of place in his voice. "Tilly, to her friends." Jack's eyes drifted to a point somewhere over Ianto's shoulder. "She was beautiful. Smart. Funny. More than a little bossy, too. Way ahead of her time."
As Jack paused, obviously remembering the woman, Ianto saw a still, small, sad smile flicker into and out of existence. He lifted the glass and took a small sip – it tasted like blood. He honestly didn't know what to say, so he simply continued to wait.
"I loved her more than I'd ever dreamed possible," Jack eventually said, his gaze darting back to Ianto. "But… she died. Nothing I could do helped. And I would give anything – anything – for one more day with her." Leaning a bit more of his weight against the desk, Jack crossed his arms over his chest. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. On opening his eyes once more, he all but pinned Ianto to his seat with the weight of his gaze alone. "You do stupid stuff when someone you love dies, or is about to die. I understand that – I've been there."
A tendril of hope blossomed into being. Despite Ianto's best efforts, it refused to go away. He took another small sip of the whiskey, letting its illusion of heat attempt to warm him.
"However," Jack's voice edged away from nostalgia and towards what Ianto had privately labeled 'disobey and die' command-tone, "though I understand your motives for hiding her, if you ever do anything even a fraction of that monumentally stupid again, you needn't fear retcon – I'll personally put a bullet between your eyes. I won't even hesitate. And just so we're clear, in this case, it wasn't you trying to save your girlfriend that was so stupid. It's not even that you thought she could be saved. No, what I'm talking about here is that you hid it from me." Throughout the entire tongue-lashing, Jack didn't raise his voice even a half-decibel. He didn't need to. "Understood?"
Ianto swallowed hard. "Yes, sir," he managed, though only just barely.
A bit of the intimidation Jack had so easily donned – like some incorporeal version of his greatcoat – faded. He uncrossed his arms and rested his palms against the desk's edge. "Now, as to the irritating bit of leadership. Punishment."
Ianto straightened. He could feel that damn tremor wanting to start back up, but he counted his breaths and pushed it away by sheer force of will. "Yes, sir."
"I don't dare suspend you – the entire team would fall apart inside the first six hours without decent coffee," a hint of Jack's normal level of humor infused the statement. Had Ianto's emotions been functioning properly, he might've managed an inward smile. "So… Since I can't be rid of you – even temporarily – without needing to have Owen stock up on painkillers for the inevitable caffeine withdrawal, I've decided you're stuck here."
Ianto shook his head. Can't have heard that properly. "Sir?"
"You're stuck here," Jack repeated. "Until I say you can go home. In addition to your regular duties, I've drawn up a list. I know how much you seem to like those." Jack handed him a sheet of yellow paper torn from an A4 pad. "You have six hours, beginning now, to rest. Use the sofa, or go down and sleep on that camp bed you've got stashed in the archives."
Ianto downed the remains of the Scotch in his tumbler and stood. He handed the tumbler back to Jack, then said, "Yes, sir. Is that all?"
Jack nodded and Ianto turned to leave. As he reached the door, Jack called out, "Ianto." Ianto turned to look at him. "I'd never make you forget her," he all but whispered. Ianto didn't know how to reply to that, so he didn't; he simply let his feet carry him down to the storage room next to the main archives where he'd set up an uncomfortable place to sleep on those nights he couldn't leave Lisa.
Jack waited until he was certain Ianto was well out of hearing distance before he sighed, then loudly said, "Owen – you can quit eavesdropping."
Owen shuffled into sight, a grimace of a smile on his face. "Just thought you'd like to know that Jenny should be fine."
"Good," Jack said, relief leaking into his posture.
"Why'd you let him off like that?" Owen asked, confirming Jack's suspicion that the medic had only heard the 'punishment' portion of his conversation with Ianto.
"He's gonna wind up punishing himself way more than I ever could," Jack replied.
"Should I prep a drawer?" Certainly, it wasn't a very tactful question, but Owen wasn't known for his tact.
Jack shook his head. "I don't think so. If he survives the next couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure he won't need one," Jack knew Owen was all but outright asking if he thought Ianto was likely to kill himself. "Maybe if it had killed one of us, or if Myfanwy hadn't survived. As it is, he just needs a distraction until it scabs over."
"Will it scab over?" Owen wondered, then shook his head. "No, I don't want to know. You gave him a bunch of makework, didn't you?" he asked instead, not able to help but draw parallels to his own first weeks at Torchwood.
"Hey," Jack forced a small grin onto his face. "You can't argue that it works."
Owen frowned. "God save us all from the Jack Harkness school of dealing with grief."
"It's not like he can talk to a therapist, you know," Jack defended his decision. "Not with what we do. It'd be too hard to talk around all the bits and pieces he simply can't reveal. No therapist worth anything would let that sort of avoidance slide."
"No," Owen agreed. "I know. Maybe you should hire one. Not one of us is what they'd call mentally stable."
"Think that part's in the job description. A little insanity's necessary to do what we do."
"Anyway," Owen changed the subject. "Like I said, I'm pretty sure Jenny's gonna be fine. She's doing that trace-thing again and should wake on her own, though I don't know when."
"I'll keep an eye on her tonight," Jack said. "You head on home. If you see Tosh, tell her to go, too. We'll see about cleaning up the mess in the morning."
"What about you?" Owen asked, finally approaching the topic he wanted to discuss.
"What about me?" Jack picked up the decanter of Scotch and returned it to the liquor cabinet.
"You alright? That thing shocked the hell outta you – literally, I mean, though I suppose it might've been figurative, too."
Jack let out a small chuckle. "Yeah, that's a pretty good description. Never expected to find a Cyberman in my own house." He closed the doors of the liquor cabinet and turned to face his medic. "I'm fine, Owen. Actually, I'm pretty sure that her weapons system was one of the ones that hadn't been fully integrated. Stung like hell, yeah, but no worse than getting zapped by a faulty light switch."
"You were unconscious, Jack. That's not something to simply shake off."
"Owen, listen to me: I. Am. Fine. If I feel anything out of the ordinary, I'll call you. Promise." Jack had adopted the no-nonsense attitude that told Owen he wasn't about to budge.
Owen sighed in frustration. "Is it doctors in general, or just me?" he grumbled.
"Go home, Harper," Jack ordered, leaving absolutely no room for any other interpretation. "See you in the morning. Don't come in before nine."
Owen decided to let the argument – not that it really qualified as such – lie. "Fine," he said. "See you tomorrow." One of these days, Jack, you're gonna wind up needing me yourself, and I'm gonna wind up botching something because you haven't let me do so much as type your damn blood.
Once Owen was gone, Jack returned the hideous armchair to its place in the corner, then flopped onto it. All told, today could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. However, nobody was killed. Against a Cyberman, that's something worth celebrating. Too bad I don't have the energy. Dying twice within ten minutes sucks the life right out of me. A tiny smirk toyed with the edges of his face at the pun. I'll go down and check on Jenny in a minute. He yawned and closed his eyes. In a minute…
Less than a minute later, soft snores filled his office.
A/N2: I really liked toying with this episode – almost enough to want to make a series of AUs for my AU, exploring other options. But I'm not going to – this is enough work (along with my other WIPs) for now.
Kindly lemme know if y'all are enjoying this or not. Thanks in advance.
