Author's Notes: Evening, all! It's that time again. Big thanks to all who are still reading, reviewing, and enjoying. Just to warn you all, I'm off on holiday soon (to Cardiff, in fact!), so when I said that normal service was resuming... that may have been a bit optimistic of me. Just so you know.
Special thanks to riftintime for ensuring it all makes sense.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ianto Jones was not a fighting man. He'd been fully trained in hand-to-hand, of course, and those skills had been required from time to time, but it was not an inclination he generally felt. He wasn't somebody for whom physical violence was a passion that required feeding; in fact, he considered it a relatively base response, and would always choose words over fists. Yet, something about physically butting heads with Jack Harkness sent fire through his blood in a way which little else ever had.
And it appeared the feeling was mutual, as Jack's indomitable grin remained through every hit and every shove, and he actually cackled when he crashed through the flimsy chair that sat haphazardly in the corner of the room. Ianto took a moment to swipe at the blood which trickled from his own nose, pain flaring hot and strong at various points on his face and torso even as raw strength pulsed through him. He had Jack in a head-lock by the time the matron finally bustled into Cerys' room, demanding to know what on Earth was going on, prompting the two men to scrabble for their ID cards and flash them at the woman without a word. With a stern warning to at least keep away from the patient's bed, the matron left, though clearly unwilling, moments before Jack kicked Ianto's legs from under him.
It was quite some time before Ianto felt fought-out enough to end it. Sparring with Jack and revelling in an aggression which the Captain only encouraged soothed him in a completely unexpected manner, substantially calming a little of the injustice-fuelled rage which had been boiling beneath his surface for days (was it only days?). Jack, too, seemed to lose his steam at the same time, falling gracelessly onto his backside with a grunt and staying there as Ianto slid down the wall alongside him. The ever-tolerant Cerys remained still, comatose, peaceful. Her lack of reaction after the chaos was almost comical.
Ianto's arse hit the floor with a soft thump and his lower back protested, forcing a soft groan from his lips. There was a rustling next to him, and then Jack was handing him a worn-looking hip flask. Dazed and aching, Ianto took it, and drank deeply without caring what he'd been given. The burn of something brutally strong scorched his throat, but he swallowed convulsively until Jack's hovering hand appeared to take it back. Ianto watched as the man next to him finished off the fiery liquid, and they each sighed almost simultaneously.
"I love this planet" Jack said, his voice low and hoarse, hair unusually ruffled and cheeks flushed from exertion. "Its mess, its noise... but maybe there's such a thing as going too far to protect it."
Ianto remained silent, thinking about that statement in relation to what George had said. Perhaps Jack's ruthlessness had cost other races – and indeed humans – too much, on occasion. Perhaps Jack wasn't as pleased with himself as he generally appeared to be.
"Doctors say she's off the critical list" Jack continued, nodding towards Cerys and folding his arms across his chest, stretched-out legs locked at the ankles.
"Have I served my purpose yet, Jack?" Ianto asked, the words spilling from him before he could ponder stopping them. He was so weary, bruised, he'd made too many mistakes. There was a sense of finality about the day as evening drew near, though he was fooling himself in thinking he had a choice regarding his future. "Do you want me out, now?"
"Are you joking? You're on clean-up duty, after all this."
Ianto narrowed his eyes at Jack. His tone was irritatingly jovial, and Ianto hadn't the first clue how to make any of this better.
"I only know one way to police."
"No, you don't. You're just too busy trying to prove Torchwood wrong to broaden your mind."
Ianto opened his mouth to protest, to spit back a retort and release a little of the familiar annoyance which always seemed to flare when in Jack's company for longer than a minute, but found no words forthcoming. There was no point in defending himself against the truth.
"But then, I've been pretty damn inflexible too" Jack added, tone contrite, and Ianto remembered the conversation in his flat which was far too similar. They were moving in an infinite downward spiral.
"Is this how you always train your recruits? Do you just throw us all in at the deep end and hope for the best?" Ianto asked, eyes fixed on the flickering light near Cerys' head which made her fair hair glow as if a halo.
"My team found me" Jack replied. "All of them were touched by some form of extraterrestrial force, which brought them to Torchwood's attention. All of them have had something special, some spark that sets them apart from the rest of humanity... enough to make me reveal one of the world's best-kept secrets and invite them to join the most elite team in the world. Believe me, I've had thousands of opportunities to increase my workforce, with the amount of people who are exposed to alien life every day – but I only pick the best."
"Your standards must be slipping. You wanted me on the team, if I recall correctly."
"What, you think you're the only one who's made mistakes?" Jack laughed, grinning with blood-stained teeth when Ianto turned to stare at him. "Owen let loose an alien banshee who deafened twenty-three people in his first week. Gwen released a sentient sex gas from a meteor which turned a bunch of men to dust on her first day. Toshiko once almost caused the entire country to collapse in on itself by accidentally typing a destructive pass code into an archaic alien typewriter... the list goes on and on. You're probably top of the class, Jones."
"You're a more lenient boss than I thought" Ianto replied quietly, reeling a little over the fact that these threats to humanity had been occurring under normal people's noses for years, and wondering what remained of Torchwood in 2011. Perhaps it was still here, led by an elderly Jack, still in his outdated coat. The thought almost made him smile.
"Not lenient; just secure in my choice of friends" Jack stated with determination, and Ianto was surprised by the concept of Jack seeing him as a friend. "You throw up a lot of question marks for me, Ianto Jones. You've never been easy to work out. The rest of the team... discovering the existence of aliens almost broke them, all of them, and I built them back up. I know them better than I know myself. But you... you're altogether different. You need guidance and support that I've never really offered."
Ianto remained silent for a long moment, breaking down Jack's words. That Jack appeared to still want him as part of Torchwood – enough to imply that they should spend more time together in order to train Ianto more fully – was baffling. The sincerity in his voice was such that Ianto couldn't even accuse him of simply being unnecessarily charitable to a lost soul, and frankly, that didn't seem like Jack's style anyway. But regardless of Jack's strange acceptance of him and their entwined list of mistakes, he wasn't sure whether he himself had the strength to keep trying.
"She's not giving up" Jack said, nodding towards Cerys before turning again to Ianto; "neither should you."
Jack shoved himself to his feet, seeming to struggle with his own weight, before he held a hand down to Ianto with an expectant expression.
"Come with me."
It was dusk when Ianto found himself leaning against the highest edge of the Pierhead Building's clock tower. Above, the final clinging shimmers of red faded from the sky, and he watched as stars peered through shifting clouds. Jack's coat flapped against his leg, and the Captain sighed deeply beside him.
"You said that I don't trust you, Ianto. That's not it" he murmured, around them only distant voices and the low whistle of wind to be heard. "It's that you make me question my instincts. I don't like that."
"What, those instincts about me being a useful addition to the team?" Ianto asked, going for ironic but sounding only exhausted, even to himself.
"Instincts about myself, about my work, about who I thought you were..." Jack trailed off, his eyes sliding towards Ianto. "I thought it would be simpler than this. But I guess it makes sense that you'd be an awkward one, if you're not a fixed point."
A fixed point. You are not a fixed point.
The Tarot Girl's voice repeated Jack's words in Ianto's mind, and he turned to the other man with a frown.
"I've heard that phrase before. In a dream" he replied, suddenly feeling the same sense of disorientation that he always felt within the dream.
"Who said it? Was in a little girl wearing a cloak? Long hair? Looks half dead?"
Ianto gaped at Jack, stunned by his accuracy.
"Uhh... yes... and she shows me tarot cards" he said, in a daze.
"That's not a dream, Ianto. Faith is real. She appears and disappears at will and it's almost impossible to track her down when you actually need her, but she's real."
Ianto's denial of the facts crashed down around him with the insight that Jack knew all about his mysterious visitor. And from the sounds of it, he'd met her too.
"She talked to me about you" Jack continued, appearing disturbingly casual while Ianto reeled. "About your path not being fixed."
"But what does that mean?"
Jack shrugged. "I don't believe in fate anyway, but if it exists, I guess it means you don't have one. There's nothing set in stone, for you."
"Wonderful" Ianto sighed, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his palm and idly trying to work out when he last ate. "I just love uncertainty."
"Hey, it's more exciting that way" Jack replied, adding a wink, and the comment reminded Ianto of something else Faith had said.
"She told me she only knew of two others like me..." he said slowly, watching understanding dawn on Jack's face.
"Yeah. One of them is me" he stated, expression sobering. "She told me that a long time ago, when I first wound up in Cardiff."
"Where were you before?" Ianto asked, secrecy warring with honesty in Jack's eyes.
"All over the place" he finally replied. "I was... what's called a Time Agent, in the fifty-first century. Went rogue. I travelled the galaxies long before I ever visited Earth. I don't know how long I'll be here."
Jack's expression turned wistful, and he tilted his head to stare up at the sky. It was the most Ianto had ever heard Jack speak about his past, about who he was, and it was incredible to him that Jack had just imparted more personal information to him than he'd done for his loyal team – assuming what they'd said regarding not knowing a thing about him was true. To think that Jack was from that far in the future, that time-travel was presumably as mundane to him as walking to the post office... as much as Jack wound him up, as much grief as he'd caused Ianto, the younger man still felt for him. The Captain appeared to actively encourage misjudgements about himself, but Ianto only had himself to blame for repeatedly falling for it.
"Torchwood has changed a lot over the years" Jack continued, still star-gazing. "In the beginning, it was all about The Empire. Keeping Britain great. Anything alien or supernatural was a threat to be eradicated. It remained that way for years, with branches in London and Scotland, and they had the same idea. The motto was 'if it's alien, it's ours'... but when I became the leader of Torchwood Cardiff, I changed it. We gave aliens fair trial, we learned from them, and violence was a last resort. But in the last few years, somehow, I've... lost my way."
Jack knotted his fingers together, and Ianto was stunned to see Jack truly insecure. His eyes dropped from the sky and focussed on the empty pavement below them, and he looked as if he regretted every word he'd let slip.
"You've been down there too long" Ianto said, eyes trailing the hard line of Jack's profile. "You've forgotten what it's like to be..." he trailed off, remembering what Jack had revealed about his past.
"Human?" Jack finished for him, cracking a smile. "I am human, Ianto. Not technically from Earth, but still human."
Ianto huffed out a soft laugh. "Maybe while what you're doing is centuries ahead of the rest of the world, life around Torchwood is moving at its own pace and you're not keeping an eye on its direction. You've become detached. All of you, to various extents."
Jack was silent for a long moment, seeming to absorb what Ianto had said, before giving an almost imperceptible nod.
"So are you still up to the challenge of reeling us in, do you think?"
Ianto's stomach clenched uncomfortably at the thought of simply carrying on while there was miles of potential for missions to go wrong over and over if he and Jack couldn't play well together, but maybe... maybe the Captain deserved the benefit of the doubt, after all he had deigned to reveal tonight. Ianto liked to think that it would be the final time he would put himself through trying to be part of Team Torchwood, but without it, there was nothing else. Nobody who could understand his plight, nobody who could help him return home... he had to stay, regardless.
Jack didn't wait for an answer, straightening up at last and sweeping his tongue over the split in his lip, removing any lingering traces of fresh blood.
"Hungry?" he asked suddenly, louder than Ianto was expecting, as he drew himself to full height in a way that was conspicuously tentative, his fresh bruises obviously causing him pain in the chill air.
"Starving" Ianto replied, following closely as Jack stepped away from the ledge. How Jack even got permission to just saunter up tall buildings, Ianto didn't know, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
"Let's get chips" Jack suggested, yanking open the door to the stairwell and motioning for Ianto to step through first, his smile turning mischievous. "And you can tell me about that twenty-first century girlfriend of yours. Lisa, isn't it?"
Ianto stilled briefly before remembering that Jack had read his initial notebook entries about the transition from 2011 to 1973, and to his own surprise, he found himself smiling.
"Sounds like a deal."
"Is she hot?" he heard Jack ask from behind him, and Ianto couldn't help but chuckle even as he rolled his eyes.
"Wait around for, say, twenty-four years, and you can see for yourself" he replied, warmed by the sound of Jack's laughter filling the space around them.