Gone Underground

Ianto's fingers itched to punch coordinates into the wrist strap, regardless of the risk it presented, but for the moment he did his best to appear as though nothing was wrong. Will was leading him in the general direction that he needed to go and the added firepower could be helpful if things took a turn for the worse. Not that a gun would have any effect on a Toclafane.

It was the fact that Will had known his real name that made him especially leery. Since Istanbul, he'd gone exclusively under the name Idris Hopper. It was only Martha and Saxon who called him by his real name, and he rather hoped to never hear the Time Lord's voice again. The insane prattling and taunting did nothing but fuel his desire to see the madman dead. For what he had done to Jack alone, Saxon deserved no mercy.

"There's not many of us down here," Will said after awhile. "Only half a dozen anymore."

"It's certainly an ideal place to hide. You must have access to most of the city this way," Ianto commented, his torch flickering about the tunnel in case there were active surveillance devices. "How often do the Toclafane come down here?"

"Often enough. We keep moving our hiding places to limit the chance that they'll find us," Will explained, his own torch darting over the walls. He paused momentarily then motioned for Ianto to duck down as they advanced the next few steps. "Motion detectors. The Toclafane tend to fly at the same height through here so we can generally get some type of warning when they're nearby."

Ianto was genuinely impressed by the ingenuity of the people hiding in the Underground. From his experiences around the world, Ianto knew that the different resistance groups were largely made up of regular people. Businesspeople, teachers, housewives, and chefs with only the odd military, medical or scientific personnel involved. People were truly resilient when the need arose.

"Is the Valiant still heading this way?" Ianto asked once he was able to stand up straight again.

"As of early this morning it was," Will confirmed. "I generally deal with security. Someone else keeps track of it so you'll have to ask her."

"What about transmissions? Has Saxon been broadcasting lately?"

Will shook his head. "Nothing that we've been able to pick up for a few days now.... We heard that you and Miss Jones barely made it out of Japan before he destroyed it."

Ianto closed his eyes briefly, the memory of those flames flickering in his mind. "By only a few hours."

The distance had been too great for him to use the wrist strap, so instead he and Martha had escaped from the doomed country on an old barge under cover of darkness. The flames had been so intense and so bright that they'd lit up the whole sky as far away as China.

It was in China that he'd decided to return to London. He would've chosen Cardiff as his final destination, but he doubted Saxon would have let anything remain in the Hub after capturing Owen, Tosh, and Gwen. Ianto only hoped Saxon hadn't found out about the old Torchwood storage areas buried beneath London. He knew that Yvonne had purposely kept the government in the dark about the storage areas and only hoped that they hadn't been discovered since Torchwood Tower's destruction.

Will must have realized that he had no desire to talk about what had happened in Japan because he quickly changed the subject, telling him about things that had been going on in London and the rest of the UK over the past eight months. Ianto had stopped dead in his tracks when Will had told him exactly how long it'd been since Saxon had taken over. He'd stopped keeping track of the date after the first six weeks, but Ianto still found it difficult to believe that so much time had passed.

"You okay?" Will asked, turning back when he realized that Ianto was no longer following after him.

"Sorry, I just.... A lot of time's passed. Too much time," Ianto stammered, shaking his head in disbelief. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, desperately trying to keep himself from thinking about Jack suffering at Saxon's hands for eight long months. "Are we nearly there?"

Appearing quite relieved at the change of topic, Will nodded his head. "Yeah. It's just around the bend up there. There may be a bit of a surprise for you when we get there."

Instantly, Ianto was on edge. He had no idea what was going on, but it didn't sound good. It was bad enough that Will had known his real name and that he'd been expected. Ianto felt even more ill at ease after Will's latest revelations and was once again wishing that he'd teleported away as soon as Will had said his name.

"I don't have time to stop," Ianto said, glancing around to try and read any nearby signage on the walls. Anything that would tell him whether Will was leading him further from where he needed to go. He needed to get to the underground bunkers. "There's things that need doing before the Valiant arrives."

Will glanced at him over his shoulder. "Trust me, you'll want to see this."

As there wasn't much further to go, Ianto decided not to protest. If the surprise that Will mentioned turned out to be a dangerous won, he still had the coordinates for the ruined Torchwood Tower programmed into the wrist strap and could quickly press the recall button. Ianto would much rather risk alerting Saxon and UNIT to his presence in London than be handed over like a present when the Valiant arrived.

Before they even got to the bend Will had indicated, Ianto could hear the muted sounds of conversation. The six or so who made up Will's underground group were obviously unafraid of being overheard during the daylight hours. It meant they were either far from a station exit or they'd wandered into one of the many service tunnels.

Things were suddenly very, very bad.

Flipping open the cover of the wrist strap, Ianto began to activate the recall. "Look, I really need to—"

"I almost miss those suits of yours, tea-boy."

Eyes wide, Ianto stared at the figure before him in shock. "Owen? I was told.... I thought.... You're alive?"

Owen snorted and rolled his eyes. Or eye, rather. His left eye was covered in a bandage and there were burns on the same side of his face that extended down his throat and under the neckline of his long sleeve shirt. Still, it was Owen and he was alive. And if Owen was alive....

"Ianto!"

Ianto darted around Will to meet the figure sprinting towards him. As soon as she was close enough, Ianto wrapped his arms around Tosh, lifting her up off the ground and into a tight hug. Owen wandered over as well, clasping a hand on Ianto's shoulders as he continued to hold on tight to Tosh. He smiled broadly at Owen and glanced around looking for Gwen. When he couldn't see her, he looked to Owen who silently shook his head. He should have known that Gwen would do something brave and stupid and get herself killed.

"We've been so worried about you," Tosh said against his shoulder. "We'd hear rumours, but you know what happens when a message gets passed on too many times. I'm so glad this rumour was true."

"I was about ready to teleport out of here," Ianto admitted, chuckling quietly as he took a step back to properly see her. Except for appearing a bit thinner, she looked exactly like he remembered, if a little exhausted. "Your security guy's been dangerously vague about things. I was getting suspicious."

Owen snorted. "Will's good at that. A rather annoying habit that he shares with both you and Jack."

Ianto scowled, the corners of his lips tilting upwards despite his best efforts to look stern. "I was told months ago that the Hub had been destroyed and that you'd been taken. How did you end up here in London?"

"The Hub's gone," Tosh confirmed, leaning against Ianto. He wrapped an around her waist, holding her against him. "UNIT invaded with guns and bombs. The Hub's a great big hole in the ground now. Everything's gone."

"You'll be happy to know your pet got away safe. We let her out when we realized UNIT were heading for Cardiff," Owen interrupted, offering up a brief smile. "We don't know what's happened to Myfanwy since, but she at least has a chance. Hopefully she ate a few of those UNIT bastards on her way out of Cardiff."

"But Gwen? How did you get out?"

Owen glanced away, sighing quietly. "We don't know where Gwen is."

"She got out of the Hub with us," Tosh continued, reaching over to squeeze Owen's hand. "Those maps you made of the unmarked tunnels were a godsend, by the way. But you know Gwen...."

"She ran off to try and find Rhys," Ianto finished for her, shaking his head briefly. He couldn't fault her devotion to her boyfriend since he was technically doing the same. Gwen's problem was that she never paused long enough to think things through. She blundered her way through things, assuming since she was the one doing it that she was right. "Did she even have any idea where he was?"

"Would it really have mattered?" Owen said with a sad, tight-lipped smile. "You'd still be looking for Jack even if you didn't know where he was."

Ianto couldn't argue with him so he didn't even bother trying. Only he was making sure that he was as prepared as could be before he went back to the Valiant. With Tosh and Owen there, Ianto felt more comfortable than before that he could successfully get to Jack.

He'd come to London for the sole purpose of getting to Jack.

"I'm glad you're all right," Tosh murmured, squeezing him tight and effectively taking some of the tension away.

Ianto squeezed her just as tight, relieved that Tosh and Owen were safe and alive, if not entirely in one piece. He really hoped that Gwen was all right, or at least still alive, and that she hadn't stupidly got herself killed. He wanted to believe that Gwen would have taken the time to actually think before going off after Rhys. Ianto understood completely how she felt—he was willing to do anything in order to get Jack off the Valiant—but even he knew that it would be impossible to do without first figuring out the "how." The truth of it was that he didn't really know what he was going to do. He had a bunch of very vague ideas that he hoped would solidify into something real that actually worked.

Jack had suffered long enough and he desperately wanted to put an end to it.

"You look about ready to drop, Tea-boy," Owen said, looking him over with a doctor's trained eye. "Come on, you may have been travelling with a doctor, but as your treating physician I want to give you a look over before you go do your next stupid thing."

Ianto couldn't help but grin. The world was coming to an end and Owen still managed to be sarcastic and caring all in one breath. "I haven't been that stupid," he tried to defend himself, earning him a raised eyebrow from both Owen and Tosh. "Antagonizing Saxon isn't stupid, just a bit impractical."

That time Owen laughed outright. "Impractical? Only you, Jones."

As much as he hated being scrutinized by Owen, Ianto willingly submitted to the doctor's prodding and questions that time. He'd missed Owen and Tosh desperately while he'd been wandering the world with Martha. Ianto was likewise relieved to find out that Martha continued to do well on her own. She'd made it to the small enclave of resistance fighters near the Magadan rocket factory in Russia. Owen's own injuries, he was informed, came as a result of an attack at University Hospital back in Cardiff not long after the destruction of the Hub. Tosh and Owen had been doing what they could to help the people hiding out there, but had inadvertently brought UNIT down on the unarmed and unsuspecting people using it as a refuge. From long experience, Ianto knew not to probe too deeply when Owen became rather monosyllabic. Instead, he looked to Tosh.

"Where's the Valiant?" Ianto asked after he dutifully took a deep breath so that Owen could listen to his lung function. "The last I heard it was heading back in this direction."

"It's still on the other side of the Atlantic," Tosh immediately answered, sounding as perplexed about the air ship's continued stay on the North American continent as he was. "But from the transmissions we've managed to listen in on, it's due back in a few weeks."

"Weeks," Ianto sighed, shrugging into the shirt Owen tossed at him.

Tosh frowned slightly. "I'm afraid so. But what worries me more are the rumours that he's planning another telecast. One that he's planning on dedicating to you."

Ianto felt his heart stop for a several long seconds. "Jack." He slid off the table he was sitting on and wandered away from Tosh and Owen. Antagonizing Saxon was suddenly no longer impractical, it was dangerous. He only wished that the danger was directed towards him and not Jack. Jack had already suffered enough.

"I'm so sorry, Jack."