Rebuilding the Past

After so many months of constant travel and action, the waiting was slowly driving Ianto insane. He'd finished his device days ago, but there was nothing he could do until the Valiant was closer. Ianto wanted, and needed, the UNIT flagship to be somewhere over British soil before he could put his plan into action. Even with the extra time to dissect his plan down to the most minute of details, Ianto still felt uncertain. There were too many variables that he couldn't control and could make things go terribly wrong.

"You need to relax, Ianto," Tosh prodded as Ianto hovered near her workstation. "Pacing isn't going to make the information come up any quicker."

Ianto pushed his too-long fringe out of his eyes, lips pulled tight. "Sorry. I should be better at being patient."

Tosh smiled fondly at him, turning away from the ancient computer she was using. "You're allowed to be a bit impatient. It's more than eight months since you saw Jack."

"Not quite eight months," Ianto admitted with a rueful grin. "I saw him on the Valiant for a bit, not long after this all started."

Slowly, hesitantly, Ianto told her about the night he accidentally transported himself onto Saxon's flagship. He told her about the things he'd seen, the conditions Jack was being kept in. Even after all the time that had passed, it still gutted Ianto to think of Jack, chained alone in that cavernous, humid boiler room. There were some days that Ianto hated Jack for not escaping when he had the chance. He knew Jack's reasoning, and, when he was being rational, he even understood it. But that didn't mean it didn't kill him to know that his lover was in so much danger.

"Do you think the Doctor's plan will work?" Tosh asked, chewing absently on her bottom lip.

Ianto debated internally for a moment, but ultimately shook his head. "I really do want it to work, but it just doesn't seem concrete at all. Everyone thinks the same word and Saxon is magically defeated? It's more like something out of a fairy story."

Tosh made a rather indistinguishable noise, but that Ianto took to mean that she agreed with him. It was difficult to believe that the Toclafane could be destroyed with wishful thinking. If that was the case, Saxon would never have been able to gain dominion over the Earth since Ianto doubted there was a single person minus the idiots at UNIT who supported the insane Time Lord.

"I hardly recognize you anymore," Tosh sighed, her expression somewhat melancholy. "I never would have imagined you as a soldier. You've always been more of a James Bond."

Ianto couldn't help but laugh at the idea. He would certainly prefer being a suave international spy to whatever he was doing. Ianto wasn't entirely sure what to classify his current actions as. Sometimes he felt like a mercenary, sometimes an exiled soldier, and still other times a homeless wastrel. For the first few weeks, Ianto had tried his best to keep some sense of order in his and Martha's wanderings. It hadn't lasted very long. It was impossible to do anything but exist from one moment to the next.

"Tosh! Ianto!" Owen shouted from further down the tunnel. He was running quickly from the sounds of it. "Tea-boy!"

Ianto was on his feet instantly and had already taken several steps before Owen appeared around a nearby bend. "What's going on?" he demanded, his hand already on his grin. "What's happened?"

"Tyburn's going back up in the middle of Hyde park," Owen gasped once he came to a stop. "A bloody giant gallows in the middle of the park."

Ianto's heart stuttered briefly, his breath lodged in his throat for one endless second. In his mind, the old woodcarvings of the Tyburn gallows suddenly became all too real; Jack's body jerking and shuddering as he struggled for breath. Ianto squeezed his eyes shut tight, vainly hoping it would help to block out the images.

"How close is it to being complete?" Ianto forced himself to ask once he'd regained control of himself.

Owen gave him a sympathetic look that greatly resembled a grimace. "A day. Two at most."

"You don't think that's...." Tosh's eyes were huge and she couldn't finish the thought.

"What else could it be?" Owen shrugged, his expression impassive.

Ianto had known that something was coming; something that involved Jack. He'd been expecting something grand and otherworldly, though. Not something as simple and mundane as a hanging. Of course, it was the simplicity that made it that much more devastating. Jack would be left hanging out in the open, in the perfect place for the Toclafane to attack him when he revived. Again and again.

"You do realize why he's doing this out in the open, right?" Tosh spoke up, her voice filled with the same sense of dread pooling in Ianto's gut. "He must know that you were on your way back to London."

Ianto nodded grimly. "Just because he knows I'm coming doesn't mean I'm going to stay in hiding. I came back to get on the Valiant."

"That's just stupid, Jonesy," Owen said, rolling his eyes. "DO you want to end up dead?"

"I want this to be over," Ianto sighed, his shoulders slumping. "I want to go home and try to lead some kind of normal life."

Owen and Tosh both made guttural sounds of agreement. None of them had any idea what, if anything, would happen when Saxon was finally stopped. Getting rid of the Toclafane was the most worrying prospect. It was too easy to expect them to disappear when Saxon was killed.

Using an old and tattered map of London, Owen marked the spot where the gallows were being erected. With a bit of work, Ianto was able to figure out the co-ordinates for it. He had no intention of going right away, but didn't doubt that Saxon would make sure everyone knew when he was going to use it. The co-ordinates were programmed into the wrist strap so as soon as Saxon's spectacle began, he could be there within moments.

Leaving Tosh and Owen to their own devices, Ianto went back to the unused section of the track where he'd been testing his weapon. He would only get one chance, if any, to use his creation against Saxon so it needed to be perfect. If it jammed, or there was some other kind of malfunction, he'd be dead. There was a good chance he'd be dead anyway, but he at least wanted this death to have a purpose. Dying to save the world was certainly better than death by crossing the road. Or death by Torchwood. He'd seen too many files of former Torchwood employees who'd died far too young.

One of the main things that concerned Ianto was getting close enough to Saxon for his weapon to be effective. He'd only been able to wire it to hold enough of a charge for a single shot. After that it would take five minutes for the charge to build up again. Getting off the first shot would be difficult enough without trying to avoid capture and death for five minutes before even being able to attempt the second shot.

Living in the Underground tunnels provided him with plenty of test subjects. Once the charge had built up enough, Ianto scanned the debris shoved up against the walls, searching for a rat. One in particular, a rat he'd named Mortimer, was nibbling away on some of bait Ianto'd laid out for it.

"Sorry about this, little guy," Ianto apologized as he aimed the lens of the silver disc at Mortimer. He squeezed the pressure release and a wavering beam of blue light shot towards the rat.

Mortimer the rat had been in the process of lifting a piece of slightly stale bread to his mouth when the beam hit him. It never reached his mouth. With the beam on him, Mortimer was frozen to the spot.

A miniature time lock.

It was nothing compared to what Tosh had built. Tosh had built a true time lock whereas his was little more than a small bubble of time contained within a force field. Whether or not it would work against a Time Lord remained to be seen. Ianto desperately hoped that it would because that was the only thing he could think of that might possibly defeat Saxon. There'd been information about the Doctor and possible ways of combating a Time Lord at Torchwood One, but he'd never had a high enough security clearance to see those files. At the Hub, Jack had made sure that all information on the Doctor was destroyed when he'd taken over. Most of what Ianto really knew about Time Lords came from Martha's stories during their travels around the world.

Pressing the button a second time disabled the time lock. Mortimer remained still for a few seconds longer, nose twitching in confusion. Once the rodent became aware of the fact that it was able to move again, it shot off quickly into the dark recesses of the tunnel.

Ianto turned the disc over in his hands, wishing he had something a little more substantial to fight Saxon with. He would have preferred to use the pulse cannon itself for the simple fact that it was big and dangerous looking. A disc that fit in the palm of his hand was hardly comforting, even if it was a more useful weapon against Saxon.

"Oh I really hope this works," Ianto murmured as he slipped the disc into his pocket. He sighed and leaned back against the table for a moment as he gathered himself together. Ianto allowed himself only a minute to wallow before heading back to join the others.

There was a lot that needed doing before the Valiant arrived back over London.