Author's Note: Profound apologies, lovelies! Work is BEYOND hectic lately (it already was, but we're painfully short-staffed as well right now), and sadly I was never going to get something decent written for last week. I'm trying to get back into the swing of the story now, however. Fingers crossed. You get this chapter a day early, at least. I think Jack and Ianto need to release some tension... don't you?
Epic love to everybody who read and reviewed chapter 19, and especially to riftintime for offering much-needed advice.
Chapter Twenty
Ianto could only stare dumbly on, tucking away his gun in a daze, as his colleagues worked around him. The quiet, efficient buzz of activity was punctuated by Jack's occasional barked order towards Suzie or Gwen – never Ianto – and he found himself trailing behind. He was dimly aware of the presence of an aged couple crying behind the counter – presumably the owners of the café and relatives of the young woman who had been hastily patched up by Gwen – and whispers between the team of something called B67. Ianto didn't have the emotional strength to question the fact that Gwen and Suzie were left handing comforting glasses of water to the couple and waiting for the ambulance to arrive, while he himself was wordlessly prompted to follow Jack, who once again was sporting an alien corpse across his shoulders.
The silence which befell the journey home was stiflingly thick, and Ianto rolled down the passenger window a little – christ, how he suddenly, achingly missed the simplicity of a button – simply to let in the sounds of the town around them and take the edge off the chasmic tension in the car.
On their arrival at the Hub, which was silent but for quiet mutterings between Owen and Toshiko, Jack's only words to Ianto were a growled order to write the day's report while he himself carried George towards the medical bay. Ianto lingered around the stairs before mentally shaking himself down and settling at his computer, assuming that he was to type said report, but realising before his fingers hit the keys that he had no idea of the format the official reports took. In a move that was blessedly distracting, Ianto decided to work his way into the shared file area (with the aid of the passwords which Gwen had allowed him to write in his notepad), and drew up some past write-ups for comparison. He found himself sucked swiftly into each story he skimmed through, each reading like worryingly believable sci-fi.
By the time Suzie and Gwen returned – presumably with the Cortina – Ianto was deep into his report, having gleaned enough idea of the basic set-up. He barely registered the sympathetic smile Gwen flashed him, clinging to the monotonous focus of paperwork. Besides, it was probably better for everybody if he kept his head down for at least the rest of the day. If Jack didn't knock it right off his shoulders before then, just for fun.
"How's the autopsy going?" he heard Suzie ask loud enough for everybody to hear, and Ianto looked up across the Hub for the first time since he had chained himself to his desk. Owen and Toshiko were each standing at the top of the steps which led down to the medical bay, both wearing disposable aprons and gloves – both smeared with blood. Well, look at that... even giant alien blowfish are red inside.
"Where's Jack?" Owen enquired in place of an answer; "he's going to want to hear this."
Ianto's eyes swivelled towards the Captain's office, which had been oddly silent since the man in question slipped from public view well over an hour ago. In his limited experience, Jack's presence in his office often meant as much noise as if Jack was in the main Hub, but now, the windows were obscured by blinds and not even the sounds of cursing and/or a slamming telephone receiver could be heard.
Toshiko, it seemed, was the only member of the team brave enough to knock on Jack's door. Ianto – along with everybody else – watched as she ducked her head into the darkened office briefly before pulling back, Jack following her closely with a hardened expression on his face. Ianto was startled to note that he seemed to have aged several years in the space of a day, and he had to ponder on the truth of the poisonous words George had spouted.
"What is it?" he asked the gathered group (Ianto excluded; he remained at his desk, while the real Team Torchwood gathered around the railing) in a low voice, arms crossing slowly over his chest.
"First of all, it turns out George had an internal radar of sorts – possibly a common accessory for his race, possibly something he picked up as a rogue planet-hopper" Owen shrugged. "Anyway, it was basically beaming information about Earth all over the bloody shop, so Tosh severed the link. Who knows what they could have been using all that bumf for."
"Good" Jack replied, his expression cracking only slightly with... pride, perhaps? It was difficult to tell. "Anything else?"
Ianto was surprised when Toshiko and Owen's eyes flicked towards him at the same time, just briefly, before they each faced Jack once more.
"Yes, actually" Toshiko began, seeming to draw herself up a little taller. "The blowfish had this lodged in its gills..."
She produced a silver device, ovoid and glittering with tiny green lights. Unable to help himself, Ianto stood, moving silently towards his team-mates with his eyes locked firmly on the flashing item.
"We thought it was maybe a communications unit, or some sort of EMP device, to begin with" she explained.
"So what is it?" Jack asked, his tone impatient. With that, Toshiko strode away from the group, and Ianto tracked her with his eyes as she approached the door to the interrogation room. Slipping inside, she shut herself in without a backwards glance, and silence fell.
"Wait for it" Owen quietly said, and a moment later, there was the sound of a lock sliding noisily free moments before Toshiko re-emerged. She held the device aloft, and shrugged.
"It's a lock-pick" she stated simply. "It emits a series of low-level magnetic vibrations to open any standard lock."
Ianto felt all the breath in his lungs leave him in a rush, a weight lifting gratefully from his mind.
"He escaped the interrogation room himself, Jack. This is nobody's fault" Owen stated, just in case the message hadn't got through. Ianto risked a glance at Jack, finding the man's expression wide-eyed and thunderous.
"He should have been checked and scanned when he came in" the Captain said after a long pause, forcing the words through gritted teeth. "Who was in charge of the body search?"
"You were, Jack... remember?" Toshiko said, her voice soft and wary.
Ianto wondered if it were possible to choke on pure tension, as it enveloped the team where they stood. He stopped looking at Jack, discomfited by the sight of stubborn denial warring with guilt-sodden logic (which he himself was so familiar with lately), and broke the silence by turning on his heel and retrieving his suit jacket.
"Does anybody know which hospital the waitress has been taken to?" he asked aloud, straightening his lapels.
"St. Teilo's, sweetheart" Gwen replied with a weak smile. Ianto nodded his thanks.
"I'm going to visit her" he said, not waiting for a response. The echo of his shoes on the steel stairwell reverberated from the walls, amplifying the surrounding silence by comparison – a glaring metaphor for how he was so obviously apart from the rest of the team, despite Toshiko and Owen taking the time to prove Jack wrong about the locked door – and he felt he could only breathe properly once one ground level again.
Ianto found the Cortina parked at the front of the police station, looking irritatingly like it hadn't moved all afternoon. As Ianto lowered himself into the driver's seat, the light scent of rotting seafood rose once more and merged hideously with the stink of sewage still clinging to the cuffs of his trousers. Fighting through the urge to fling open the door and vomit across the car park, purging himself of the day's fear and guilt and sweat-soaked panic, Ianto simply and efficiently rolled down the windows and switched on the ignition.
St. Teilo's was placed precisely where Ianto remembered it to be; a fact which filled him with a bittersweet longing for his past – the world's future – and all that he might have missed by now. With a flash of his ID and a few well-placed questions, it wasn't difficult to locate the young victim. According to the matron, the pressure Gwen had maintained on her wound was enough so that she didn't bleed to death, but not enough that she didn't require being admitted to intensive care. Ianto mentally braced himself as he entered the young woman's private room, but was soothed to see her looking peaceful, despite the twin tubes protruding from her nostrils.
Ianto stepped closer to peer at the chart clipped to the foot of her bed – Cerys Fletcher – before he shuffled back to lean against the wall, watching the laboured rise and fall of her ribcage as he thought back the day's newest developments. The fact that he wasn't responsible for George's escape lost all sense of moral victory when pitted against a young woman fighting for her life. It seemed petty to have remained concerned about that, even after the image of her bleeding across the floor was burned into his mind. Similarly, he found himself unable to even persecute Jack for not checking the prisoner thoroughly, when nothing could alter the facts. Ianto supposed he wouldn't be blamed if he did choose to scorn Jack under the circumstances, but it was with a weighty resignation that he realised he didn't even want to. He was just too tired.
Leaning against the stark white wall, the scent of disinfectant hanging in the air and the insistent, life-affirming beep of hospital equipment surrounding him, Ianto wondered if he could sink any lower than this without simply fading away. The desire to stay strong, to remain focussed on staying close to Torchwood in order to return home had waned until it was little more than the memory of warmth for what was once a burning flame. There were only so many walls a man could force his way through, Ianto thought, before simply giving up. And the young woman fighting for her life before him, threatened directly by an extraterrestrial being who Torchwood – the supposed experts – had failed to stop, was a wall he couldn't see himself scaling with any kind of ease. He had no place in 1973, whatever the Tarot Girl or Gwen Cooper or even Jack Harkness said. It was startling how a location that, on the face of it, he knew so well could feel so utterly wrong.
Ianto couldn't tell how much time had passed before the door creaked slowly open, as if tentative, and a man in a long blue-grey coat stepped in. Ianto might have reacted with a little more surprise if he hadn't been able to smell Jack's aftershave before the Captain had even reached for the handle, but as it was, he kept his eyes on Cerys' bed, fists firmly lodged in his pockets. Almost immediately the air became strenuous to breathe, neither man moving, until Jack broke the spell by stepping forward to place a wilting bunch of roses at Cerys' feet.
Ianto watched as the Captain stood there for a few moments, his hands behind his back and feet spread wide, broad shoulders pushed back in a gesture of strength and heroism which was betrayed only by the way his head hung low and loose.
"I suppose I owe you an apology" Jack said, his voice low and soft and strangely intimate, spine visibly sagging as he spoke.
"She might appreciate it more once she's awake" Ianto stated with a long sigh, thinking that the poor girl deserved a great deal more than just an apology, when Jack's head turned until his profile was visible, eyes heavy-lidded and mouth down-turned.
"I wasn't talking to her" he murmured.
"There's no need."
Ianto had to wonder why those three words were his initial response when yes, Jack owed him an apology, and yes, he'd in essence accused Ianto of leaving open a door which led to an alien escaping and causing harm not only to the team, but to the public... and yes, Ianto should have been damn grateful for the fact that Jack was being so gracious as to admit when he was wrong. But it simply wasn't important any more. Not even a little bit.
Jack spun around to face him, the movement so sharp and quick Ianto almost jumped, and the Captain's eyes narrowed to slits.
"The passive-aggressive look doesn't suit you."
A previously-quelled anger rose up in Ianto, lingering in his chest, tight and hot.
"I don't want to hear your apologies, Captain" he replied, the words clipped and determined. "I'm not here to assuage your guilt."
Ianto was surprised to see Jack reel almost as if struck, before stepping swiftly into Ianto's personal space.
"I'm getting really tired of you talking down to me from the moral high-ground" he growled, breath hot against Ianto's skin.
"I've got more right to do so than you ever will, if what the blowfish said was true" Ianto retorted, too irritated to watch his mouth any longer.
"You know nothing about me."
"I know enough. I know that if I stay here, if I listen to you apologise and just keep plodding on, this is going to happen again and again. You're never going to trust me, I'm never going to trust you, and this whole situation? Torchwood? Aliens? It's insanity, Jack. I'm done."
Ianto's chest burned, and he realised that he was struggling to breathe. Claustrophobia set in – he needed air. He shoved against Jack's chest with his forearm, putting a little space between them, and before he could register Jack's raised fist, his head was snapping to the side with the impact of broad knuckles across his jaw. Pain flared brightly where their skin had connected, and he stumbled, staring at Jack in shock. The Captain smirked at him, stepping back with his arms spread in an invitation that Ianto – suddenly thrumming with adrenaline – was loathe to resist. So he didn't.
The cathartic effect of thumping Jack's smug face and watching him crumple to the floor was profoundly intense, and some of the tightness in his lungs finally disbanded as Ianto shook out his satisfyingly throbbing knuckles.
Jack sat up on the floor and swiped one hand messily across his mouth, before grinning, wide and devious.
"That's more like it", he muttered, and when he made a lunge for the younger man's knees, Ianto almost laughed.