Same Ianto, Different Jack
Chapter 21: Interlude with Ianto's Jack
by Gracefultree
A/N: Hello lovely readers. I'm excited my last few chapters went over so well. Now, there's been a lot of talk about finding out what's going on for Ianto's Jack, in his home universe. How's he handling Ianto's disappearance? How's he coping? Has Gwen made a move on him? Well, I'm here today to relieve some of that anxiety by giving you a very long chapter about Ianto's Jack.
On a side note: I do have a reason for every universe Ianto visits. (Though the one where Torchwood was a TV show was really just me being silly.) I'm not sure how exactly to let you know what my reasons are for Ianto's visits. I'll think on that problem while we hear from Ianto's Jack.
Enjoy, and please keep the comments coming! They're very inspiring, and I got the first half of the New Lisa universe up so quickly because you motivated me so much. Now I have to digest your thoughts, my thoughts, and the way the story wants to go in order to write the second half. And I love that some of you like what Ianto's doing and others don't. Being able to see both sides of an issue is what makes a story more interesting, don't you think?
.
.
.
Jack sat alone in the vaults in front of the cell where Ianto had last been seen. He hadn't moved in roughly twelve hours, except to stroke the cover of Ianto's stopwatch with his thumb. He heard the footsteps approaching, but ignored them. There wasn't a Rift flare, he knew, because his vortex manipulator would have told him. There wasn't something else to deal with, because one of them would have contacted him on the comms. A social visit, then.
"Jack? I brought some -"
"No coffee!" Jack snarled, turning away from cell 27 to glare at Gwen. She met his eyes challengingly.
"- tea," she finished after a few seconds of silence to make her point. "We know not to get you coffee. We're not stupid!"
Jack had the grace to look ashamed of his outburst. "I'm sorry, it's just been a hard night." He took the tea from her, resettling on his stool. He cradled the mug in both hands, staring into it.
"Nightmares?" she asked.
"I kept seeing all these horrible things happening to him..." Jack said softly. "Awake or asleep, whenever I close my eyes. I — I miss him, Gwen."
"I know, sweetheart. We all miss him."
"Not the way I do," he mumbled.
"Well, no, none of us were shagging him..."
"It was more than that. We didn't talk about it, but it was more than just shagging. I was going to ask him to dance with me at your wedding," he admitted. "He might not have said yes, but I'd have asked him, shown him that he means something to me."
"Of course he'd have said yes!" Gwen declared. "He loved you, you idiot. He loves you," she corrected hastily.
"What's to love about me?" Jack muttered. "I couldn't even tell him I wasn't sleeping with anyone else. I haven't, you know. Not since I got back from 1941."
"That long?" Gwen said, her eyes wide with surprise. "I mean, we kind of wondered when you asked him on that date, but …"
"You don't believe me," Jack stated with a snort of disgust. "Of course you don't. No one would. Not even him. That's why I didn't tell him. I thought... I didn't want him to laugh at me and think I was saying it to pity him." He sighed. "I'm such a coward, Gwen. I couldn't tell him how much he meant to me, and now he's gone, and he'll never know-"
"We'll get him back," Gwen interrupted. "Tosh's Rift predictor program is getting better every day. None of us have given up."
"It's been three months. What if he never comes back? What if he comes back like Jonah, huh? What if I have to send him to Flat Holm?"
"What if he comes back fine?" she countered. "Tomorrow? You don't want to look scruffy and over-tired, do you?"
"Scruffy?" Jack demanded, a little of his wounded pride coming out in his voice.
"Yeah. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You need a haircut. When's the last time you slept more than a few hours?"
"I think I got four hours in a row last week sometime," he answered. "But maybe it was the week before that. I used to be able to get six or seven if he was with me."
"Jack, I want you to get some sleep. And take a shower. And eat a decent meal. When's the last time you ate?"
Jack sipped his tea to keep from answering. "God, how much sugar is in this?" he demanded.
"If you're not eating, sugar is calories, isn't it?" she asked sweetly. "You're wasting away. We're all worried about you."
"I can't eat. It just makes me want to throw up." Jack took another sip of tea, grimacing at the cloying taste. "Either that or it sits there like a stone." He closed his eyes for a moment, an expression of pure pain on his face. He swallowed half the tea.
"It's hard to lose people," she whispered.
"He's not gone!" Jack shouted, standing and throwing down the mug. He wavered slightly on his feet. "Woah, little dizzy." He grabbed Gwen's shoulder to keep standing. He raised his other hand to his head. "I feel weird."
"Come on. Let's get you some food. That'll help."
"It's not low blood sugar," Jack protested. "It's more like I've been —" he broke off, staring at her. "You drugged me!" he accused. He reached for his comms. "Owen! Tosh! Get down here, Gwen's —"
"Already here," Owen grumbled, coming up behind him. He gave Jack a small push and the captain crumpled to the ground. "How much of it did you get him to drink?" he asked Gwen, shining a penlight in Jack's eyes.
"A little more than half," Gwen answered.
"Owen —" Jack moaned. "You've gotta help me —"
"Yeah, yeah," Owen muttered, rolling up Jack's sleeve. "I've got just the thing." Carefully, he inserted a needle into Jack's arm, pressing down on the plunger to inject the medicine. Jack tried to protest, but the drugs took effect quickly, putting him to sleep. Owen glanced at Gwen, kneeling on the other side of Jack's now unresponsive body. "He'll burn through this pretty quickly, so let's get him to his bunker."
"I never thought I'd willingly drug one of my friends," she said softly as they carried Jack through the corridors to the main Hub, where Tosh joined them.
"Well, like you said, he hasn't been eating, sleeping, or doing much else but stare at the Rift numbers or that damned cell for three months," Owen replied. "Sure, he'll lead missions, but he's not himself. He's distracted, and that's starting to get dangerous. We have to find a way to convince him to look after himself again."
"I think I have something that might help," Tosh said, walking up. She waved a DVD in the air. "Ianto made Jack a goodbye video a few weeks after Jack got back. He'd left it in the Archives in his own folder. I'm not sure why we never looked there until now."
"I didn't know there was a paper file in the Archives on him," Owen admitted. "Is there one for all of us?"
"Yes," Tosh answered. "I checked. They all have pictures and videos and stories about us. Ianto said in his introduction to his video that he made them so that Jack could remember us longer, you know, not just rely on his brain. He narrated the videos, too, since Jack's made no secret of how much he likes Ianto's voice."
"You watched them?" Gwen asked.
"Just his, and a few minutes of mine. I wanted to make sure it was what I thought it was."
They'd just finished manhandling Jack down into his bunker when the Rift alert sounded. Gwen finished getting Jack settled while the others looked at the report.
"Rift flare in an abandoned warehouse outside town," Tosh reported.
"Lovely," Owen muttered to himself. "Couldn't it at least be by the docks? I don't want to leave Jack alone for too long with all those drugs in his system."
"He'll be fine," Gwen declared, climbing out of Jack's bunker. With swift movements she closed the hatch and locked it from the outside. "And now he'll be forced to sleep and eat while we're out," she added, wiping her hands and smiling triumphantly.
"Isn't it dangerous to leave him locked in?" Owen asked, gathering a pair of field kits. "What if there's an emergency?"
"There's another way out," Tosh explained. "What? Ianto mentioned it once when he was drunk," she exclaimed when the others gave her strange looks. She went to the armory for guns for them all, handing them out. "How else do you think they kept the fact that they were sleeping together a secret from us for so long? Ianto pretty much lived here until his suspension, between taking care of Lisa and sleeping with Jack."
"Makes sense," Gwen mused. She turned to Owen. "See? He'll be fine."
.
An hour later the three Torchwood agents climbed out of the SUV in front of a derelict building of some kind that stood all by itself in a field.
"I'm getting four or five lifeforms, definitely alien," Tosh reported, fiddling with her scanner. "Five. Definitely five."
"Could it be Weevils?" Owen asked.
"No, different energy signature. They're spread out throughout the building, one in each corner, and the other in the center. The weird thing is that they're not moving, not even after hearing us pull up. None of them are coming to the windows to check, and I'm not getting any signs of communication between them."
"Maybe they're telepathic?" Gwen suggested. "And have really good scanners so they know there's fewer of us than them?"
"No, I'm not sure that's it," Tosh said, pressing a few buttons. "Ah! They're not organic! There's some kind of shielding that's messing with my readings to make me think they're organic and alive."
"Can anyone else smell a trap?" Owen asked, cocking his gun.
Before anyone could answer him, the building exploded, bricks and broken glass and metal shrapnel flying everywhere. Gwen covered Owen's body with her own when they fell to the ground while Tosh ducked behind the SUV. For once, Owen didn't protest being the one being protected. He knew his body wouldn't recover getting blasted apart.
"Definitely a trap," Tosh said when the dust cleared. "I noticed five separate explosions, all perfectly timed."
"They know how many people we have," Gwen surmised. "Or how many we used to have," she amended.
"That's good, though, since that means they don't know Ianto's missing. And they're not here, which means they can think they killed him and give us the advantage because they're counting on us being distracted about him being dead," Owen said.
"We are distracted by him being dead," Gwen argued. "Look what we had to do just to get Jack to take a nap, for God's sake!" she shouted.
"Easy, Cooper, I'm just —"
"Enough," Tosh interrupted. "We've got to call Jack and figure out what to do. I say we start heading back to the Hub."
"Agreed," Owen said.
"Yeah. I'll call Jack once we're en route," Gwen added.
.
Jack woke to the sound of his mobile going off. He flailed in bed, trying to reach it on the nightstand, and ended up falling onto the floor before he could grab it. His head felt like it was full of cotton wool. What's wrong with me? he thought sluggishly. It's almost like I've been — Oh, right, my team drugged me so they could make sure I wasn't starving myself or going crazy from not sleeping. Sometimes I really hate having friends.
He sighed and picked up the mobile, crawling into a sitting position leaning against the cot. "Yes?" he asked, looking around his bunker and noticing the sandwich and bottle of water someone left for him. Probably Gwen, she's been in a mothering mood since Ianto — No, not going there, he told himself. He opened the water and took a sip.
"Jack, we've got a problem," Gwen said over the phone. "We were almost blown up by —"
"Is everyone ok?" he demanded, shock startling him into a much more wakeful state.
"We're all fine. If Owen hadn't been driving we might have been earlier and gone inside the building, but —"
"Hey, I'm still learning how to drive again," Jack could hear Owen protesting in the background. "It's not my fault the pedal is so sensitive!"
"You got pulled over," Gwen said, her voice turned away from the phone. "It's only because the officer recognized us that —"
"You mean he recognized our name stenciled on the side of the SUV?" Tosh asked sarcastically.
"Just tell me what's going on," Jack said, hoping that Gwen would get back on task. He dropped the empty bottle and took a bite of the sandwich. Ham and cheese, with pickles and mustard. Not his usual fare, and definitely not something Ianto would make him, either. Ianto hated pickles. Probably a good choice for them to make, since it didn't have too many associations with his missing lover.
"Right. Sorry. So we were nearly blown to bits by these bombs that were masquerading as lifeforms on Tosh's scanners, but we weren't blown up, so we're on our way back. What do you want us to do?"
Jack paused, then heard a beeping he hoped not to hear again for a very long time. He told them to hold on and pressed a button on his vortex manipulator. A blue-tinged hologram of John Hart appeared in front of him.
"John Hart," Jack said, rubbing his hand over his eyes. On the hologram, John started speaking.
"Oh, deja vu! Or did I say that already? Hey, team. Course, there might be a few less of you by now. Don't know if you liked my little gift. Course, you can't die. And with all that life, all that time, you can't spare any for me. Oh! Say hi to the family." Jack jerked, his mind flying into overdrive. Had John somehow found Gray? Had he gone back in time to the future and kidnapped his parents? Had he —
"Been a while since you've seen your brother, eh, Jack?" John asked, pressing his vortex manipulator and creating a hologram within a hologram of a young man in handcuffs of some kind.
"Gray?" Jack whispered, already pressing buttons to log where the transmission was coming from.
"OK, here's what's going to happen. Everything you love, everything you treasure, will die. I'm going to tear your world apart, Captain Jack Harkness, piece by piece. Starting now. Maybe now you'll wanna spend some time with me." John signed off the message, the hologram closing automatically. Jack cursed.
"Jack? Jack, what's going on?" Gwen asked, clearly still on the phone.
"It's John. He's got my brother held prisoner," Jack explained wearily. His vortex manipulator beeped, indicating an intruder. "And he's in the Hub."
"We're on our way," Gwen said. "Just stay calm, and we'll be there to help."
Jack laughed. "Not after what happened last time. None of you can handle him. This time, I take him myself," he snarled. "I'm putting the place in lockdown. With any luck, he'll think I'm out with the rest of you, so I can surprise him."
"Jack, there's something you should know," Tosh said. "There were five bombs. We think he didn't know Ianto was missing. Surely we can use that to our advantage, right?"
"I'll try to think of something," Jack said, getting to his feet. He pulled out his laptop from the top dresser drawer where he stored it when he was too busy to take it upstairs. "Anything else you think I need to know?"
"I can activate the lockdown from here, Jack," Tosh said. He could hear clicking in the background as she typed on one of the onboard computers in the SUV. "I've set it to lock the computers, too, except for your access codes, until you tell me otherwise, and it should look like it's an automatic function when an intruder is detected. I hope you don't mind." In the distance outside his bunker he could hear the Mainframe telling everyone that Torchwood was in lockdown. The announcement would be projected through all the speakers, so there's no way John could miss it.
"No, that's good. Saves me some trouble." He paused, thinking. "John said he would tear my world apart, and I think that means the city. Be ready for explosions and chaos. When that happens, I'll want each of you at key locations. Gwen, go to police HQ. Owen, the hospital. Tosh —"
"I'll stay in the car with my computers," Tosh interrupted. "That way I can coordinate since you'll be dealing with John."
"Good idea," Jack said, praising her. "And thanks, guys, for looking out for me."
"Be careful, Jack," Owen said. "There's an epi-pen on the tray with your sandwich, if you need it to counteract the drugs. Sorry about that, by the way."
Jack sighed and tossed the laptop back in his drawer. Ianto would complain about lint getting inside to mess up the processor, but Ianto wasn't here and — "If I promise to eat and sleep more, can you not drug me like that?" he asked, finding the epi-pen and injecting it into his thigh. He closed his eyes as he felt the rush of pure epinephrin entering his system. He grunted. "Damn, not my favorite feeling, here."
"But it works," Owen said. "Now get that bastard for us."
"And Jack?" Gwen asked. "I want to hear about this brother of yours when this is all done."
Jack didn't even bother responding, shutting off his phone and thrusting it into a pocket.
Living at the Hub off and on for a hundred years had its advantages, and Jack used every one to sneak up on John when he found him standing at one of the computer terminals trying to hack the system. Jack pressed his Webley against John's head.
"Hands where I can see them!" he said in a deadly voice. "And no tricks this time. You've stumbled upon me at a bad time."
"I love you, you know," John said softly. "You have to know that."
"Hands up," Jack repeated.
As if on cue, explosions rocked the base, one after another, and Jack knew the city above their heads was in a world of trouble. Fifteen explosions, he counted. Shit. And they'd all be at key locations. John didn't mess around when he had a goal. At least his team was already out there dealing with it, which was an advantage. John might think they were still recovering from the bombed warehouse and that he had more time than he did.
"All you had to do was ask nicely," John quipped. "I just wanted a little time with you. I'd have let you in on the secret…" He moved before Jack could counter him, slamming into Jack and crushing his wrist enough that he dropped his gun. Jack punched him.
It didn't take long for their fight to trash Tosh's station or upset the carefully piled files on Owen's desk. They grappled for control, hitting each other, biting what skin they could find. As Jack rolled them over so that he was straddling John, fist raised to smash his face, he couldn't help but remember a time when a fight like this would lead to sex. Sex… The last person I had sex with was Ianto, Jack thought. Something shifted in his head. John got here, to this time… if I could travel in time… I could find Ianto! Instead of hitting the man again, he reached for his vortex manipulator.
Jack froze when he saw the mess that was John's arm. The vortex manipulator dug into his skin, almost as if it were part of him, as if —
John shrugged silently, giving Jack an abashed look. Jack raised an eyebrow in question. John shifted his eyes slightly, to his arm and back again. John tapped his ear. He mouthed the word 'boom.' Jack nodded.
"You're destroying my city," Jack growled, acting for the benefit of whoever might be listening in, shoving John's arm to the floor. He made the 'stay there' gesture they'd used when they were partners at the Time Agency. It was John's turn to nod.
"Like I said, Jackie-boy, I'm going to ruin your life," John taunted. His eyes flicked to Jack's vortex manipulator. "You have eternity, and what, you don't have any time for me? How insulting!"
"Where's Gray? Where's my brother?" Jack demanded, punching buttons on his vortex manipulator. Something started beeping.
"You don't realize. Actions, ramifications, ripples in the pond," John continued. "It's beyond my control." Without waiting for Jack to be ready, he grabbed his hand, held it to his vortex manipulator, and pressed a button, surrounding them both in golden-orange light.
As soon as they landed in a field of grass, Jack jumped to his feet. "What the fuck! I almost had it off!"
"You can't get it off," John countered. "It's molecularly bonded. Tracking, monitoring everything I do. And the bomb can be activated remotely. Ninth generation. I had to take us here so he can't hear what we're saying and would be out of trigger range."
"He? He, who? What's going on?"
"Your brother, Jack. He's the one who did this to me. He wants revenge. He wants to torture you. He blames you for —"
"I don't believe it!" Jack interrupted. "He wouldn't —"
"He spent over ten years being tortured, Jack. I found him amidst a sea of corpses, still chained to the wall, begging the ghosts of the aliens that had left him behind to kill him. The only thing keeping him going is trying to find and kill you."
Jack backed away, trying desperately to understand. "But why?"
"You ever been really tortured, Jack? And not just for the training we did all those years ago?"
"Yes," Jack said softly. "Most recently for an entire year that no longer exists."
"Time paradox?"
"Yeah. We fixed it, but those of us in the eye of the storm remember."
"Damn. I was hoping that was a rumor."
Jack held out his hand. "Give that here. I think I can get it off. How much time do we have before he finds us?"
"Wait, you believe me?" John asked, flabbergasted. He offered his arm to Jack, who started pressing buttons on both vortex manipulators.
"No," Jack said flatly. "I just don't want a bomb anywhere near me."
"Suit yourself. It'll be on your head."
Jack spared a glance at John before continuing what he was doing. It had been a long time since he'd worked with a vortex manipulator that had all its functions, and he was having to refresh his memory about how to use it. After a few minutes, he closed his and tapped a button on John's. A panel opened, revealing wiring and circuitry. Jack produced a very small screwdriver from his coat and unhooked a circuit, which he put in his pocket. He moved a few wires around, removed a second circuit, and closed the panel.
"There. Sorted."
John looked at him, his eyes wide. "That's all it took? I'm free again?"
"No more monitoring, and I disabled the trigger mechanism for the bomb, though it's still attached. Couldn't do anything for that without tech we don't have here. Oh, and I borrowed the spare v-circuit."
"What?" John demanded.
"I need to be able to travel in time again and mine burned out a long time ago. I figure it's the least you can offer me for blowing up my city." Jack opened his own vortex manipulator and started working on inserting the v-circuit into the proper place. "I left you the original one, so you can leave now," he added, his voice a clear dismissal.
"Something's different about you," John commented, picking at the reddened skin around the wriststrap. Jack ignored him, concentrating on what he was doing. "Jack? What happened?" Jack continued ignoring him. John grabbed his shoulder to get his attention. "What happened?" he demanded.
Jack shrugged him off and closed the panel in his vortex manipulator. "Nothing," he muttered. He put his screwdriver away.
"No, I might be a self-centered asshole, but we were together long enough for me to tell something's wrong. Come on, talk to me. For old time's sake."
"You bombed my city. Does there have to be anything else?"
"No, it's something personal."
"You've got my brother as a hostage?" Jack suggested.
"Other way around, sunshine," John reminded him. "He's the one who put a bomb on my arm." Jack grunted. "Jack…"
"Anything I tell you, you'll use against me," Jack snarled, shoving John to the ground. "Why would I choose to open myself up to you after what happened between us?"
"I'm a changed man, Jack. Really, this time. I want to help you."
"Because you want in my pants?"
"Well, that would be an added bonus…" John said suggestively, getting to his feet and giving Jack one of his best leers. "I definitely wouldn't mind a piece of Eye Candy, either. Think he'd be —"
Jack punched him in the face, knocking him down with the force of the strike. John held his sleeve to stem the blood flowing from his nose.
"His name is Ianto!" Jack shouted. "And if you ever call him that again, I will kill you!"
"Got it, got it," John said, holding up his free hand to ward off Jack's anger. "So I suppose the threesome idea's off the table, too?" Jack kicked him in the side, his eyes burning with anger. "Yep, off the table," John muttered, still swabbing at his nose.
Jack turned away and froze, his eyes on the figure walking out of the woods towards them. "Gray?" he asked, his voice so quiet there was no way the man would hear him.
"Brother?" Gray asked in a normal voice, stepping up to Jack. "I never stopped believing. I always knew we'd find each other again."
"Gray!" Jack exclaimed enthusiastically, embracing the other man. They hugged tightly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never stopped looking for you. I —"
"Sorry's not good enough," Gray whispered, stabbing Jack in the stomach with a large knife. Jack looked at him, shocked, not quite believing that his brother would do something like that. Gray twisted the knife, making Jack groan in pain. He fell to the ground, dead. Gray turned to John. "Get the shovel." When John hesitated, Gray curled his lips into a snarl, revealing his teeth in a nasty expression. "Get. The. Shovel."
Jack revived to find John kneeling next to him, attaching shackles to his ankles. His wrists were already cuffed. They shared a look. John gave him a half-hearted smile.
"Is he ready?" Gray demanded, walking over.
"He's ready," John answered.
"Gray, I looked for you all over. You were my first thought every morning," Jack said as the two men dragged him to his feet.
"What are you expecting, mm?" Gray demanded. "A loving reunion? Absolution? Me to say, 'It's OK, brother, I forgive you.'? Those creatures, they lived to torture. They kept us just on the verge of life. I'd lie there, hemmed in by corpses, praying to become one. Because you... let go... of my hand, remember?"
"If I could swap with you, I would," Jack declared.
"Not good enough!"
"What do you want from me?" Jack asked, trying to take a step towards Gray, but the shackles kept from moving very far.
"I want you to suffer. I want your life. This is Cardiff. 27AD. The city will be built here, over the next 2,000 years. Your grave will be the city's foundations. Your blessing of life becomes a curse. Each time you revive, with a throat full of earth, each time it chokes you afresh, and you thrash on the edge of death, you think of me."
John looked about to protest. Gray ignored him and shoved Jack hard, pushing him into the open grave Jack hadn't noticed. He landed on his back, looking up at his brother and his former partner. John's face was ashen. Jack could tell he wasn't happy having to do this. They shared a look, and he realized for the first time that maybe John was telling the truth. Maybe John did want to help him.
"Fill the grave," Gray ordered.
"No way!" John protested.
"Then the detonator on your arm gets activated," Gray reminded him.
John turned back to Jack. They shared a significant look, then John removed a large ring from his finger and kissed it. He tossed it into the grave.
"What's that?" Gray demanded, shaking him.
"Er, nothing. Sentimental value only. Jack bought it for me on Ministra Prime a long time ago." Jack relaxed. He hadn't recognized the ring at first, but John's reference to one of their missions together reminded him what it was. A transceiver that would last millennia. Once Torchwood was founded and had the proper technology, they would find him and could put him in the cryo banks to wake up at the proper time to not cross his own timeline but be able to avert some of the crisis brewing in the present that was also the future. "Just telling him it's over," John continued. He picked up a shovel. Jack gave him a slight nod and closed his eyes, not protesting as John filled the grave.
.
.
.
Jack stood in front of the door and squared his shoulders, putting on what he hoped was a pleasant face. He wasn't looking forward to the conversation he was about to have, but he knew he couldn't put it off any longer.
He and Ianto never talked about meeting each other's families, other than the odd joke or two Ianto would make about wanting to know more of Jack's secrets before he brought him by. Jack told him about Gray one night when he was recently back from his travels with the Doctor, giving more of himself and sharing a few secrets as a kind of penance for running out on him. Ianto mentioned his sister and her family on occasion, and Jack knew he didn't see them often, though he'd made sure Ianto got Christmas off both years they worked together so he could go visit with them. Jack knew about Ianto's father and mother, though they never discussed it, and he allowed Ianto to think he didn't know that the master tailor Ianto mentioned was his grandfather, rather than the father Ianto claimed. Ianto didn't know about Alice and Stephen.
So what was Jack doing here? Why was he standing outside the home of Ianto's sister? He was simply doing what he should have done three months ago but was too cowardly to do back then. Too broken, too caught up in trying to find Ianto… He sighed. He had to get it over with. Ianto would want her to know. And with Gray dead, shot by John, and Alice barely taking his calls… this was the last family he had, if only by association. And Ianto would want them to know…
He rang the doorbell, just hoping Tosh had given him the correct address. From inside he heard a woman's voice shouting to hold on. He waited. A dark-haired woman answered, and he knew without asking she was the person he'd come to see.
"Rhiannon Davies?" he asked.
"Who wants to know?" she demanded with the bluster of anyone with a stranger at their door in the middle of the day when no one was expected.
"I'm Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said. "May I come in?"
"Captain? Are you with the police?"
Jack took a deep breath before answering, feeling his stomach twisting with anxiety and pain even more than when he was walking up the path or pressing the buzzer. "I work with your brother, Ianto Jones," he said after a moment. He waited as her eyes widened in shock.
"Is he all right? I've been trying to call him all week, ever since those explosions, but I haven't heard and —"
"May I come in?" he repeated softly, breaking in to her rambling.
"It he all right? Can you tell me that much?" she asked, escorting him into the sitting room. "I don't care if he doesn't call as long as he's fine, it's not like he calls often, but I thought —"
"Ianto's gone missing," Jack said as gently as he could. "We've been looking for him, and the police are aware and doing everything they can to help. I thought I should come talk to you when I heard your message on his voicemail this morning." He decided not to tell her that he'd heard the other four, also, starting with the one she'd left the day John Hart came back to Cardiff and tried to destroy the city, then that night, then one the next two days.
Rhiannon sung onto the sofa, her hand to her mouth. Jack took a seat next to her, but didn't touch her. "He's gone missing?" she repeated. "How — How long? Where is he? What was he doing? What happened?"
"We last saw him —"
"And why haven't the police been here?" she interrupted, angry. "This'd be the first place they'd come to look, wouldn't it? What's wrong with them? I —"
"Mrs. Davies," Jack started.
"No, don't 'Mrs. Davies' me! You know more than you're telling, don't you? Where's my brother, captain? Is he dead? Is this some way of breaking the news to me easy? That you'll show up in a few months and tell me he's dead?"
"No, it's not —"
"You said you work with him, huh? Why weren't you here immediately? Has it been more than a week? Has it been since before the explosions? Did you not come because you knew he never calls —"
Jack stood abruptly and turned towards the door. "I shouldn't have come," he muttered, completely overwhelmed by her reaction and feeling like there wasn't any air in the room. He knew he'd vomit from anxiety if he stayed any longer. "I should've sent Gwen," he added to himself. "Gods, even Owen would have been better."
"Now wait just a second, mister! Ianto's my brother! I have a right to know —"
"Well, he's my lover!" Jack shouted, turning back to face her. "And if you think I'm ever going to stop looking for him, you're wrong. Now I came here because I knew he'd want you to know what happened, and that's it. I'll let you know when we find him." Jack turned on his heel and stormed out of the house, slamming the front door behind him. He'd already cried for Ianto, more times than he could count, but somehow this got to him. He brushed angrily at the tears on his cheek as he rushed away from the house towards his car.
Behind him, Rhiannon opened the door and yelled after him. "Come back! You can't just say that and leave!" She ran after him, barefoot on the grass, not caring that she left her front door wide open, reaching him just as he put his hand on the car door handle. She grabbed his arm. "Come back inside," she encouraged him, tugging gently on his coat. "Come on, then. We'll have some tea."
Jack, frozen by indecision and sadness, allowed her to bring him back inside. She marched him into the kitchen and plunked him down in a chair, handing him a napkin to wipe his face. "I'll just turn on the kettle," she said, suiting words to actions. "How, um, how long, um, were you together?" she asked twenty minutes later as they each cradled mugs of tea in their hands.
"A year and a half," Jack said softly. "Off and on."
"Didn't think he was bender," she muttered to herself.
"He's not," Jack corrected. "He told me once that it's only me. Not other men, just me." Jack smiled slightly at the memory. Then he frowned, remembering other nights, other people in their bed, Ianto's responses and the fact that it really hadn't been about the other people for Ianto. It had been about being with Jack, despite the other people. "I didn't believe him, but looking back, now that he's missing, I see what he was talking about. I see so much more than I did then." A new tear made its way down his cheek.
"Do you love him?" she asked bluntly.
Jack raised his eyes from contemplating the flowered table cloth. "Yes," he answered. And I should've told him, he thought. I should've done a lot of things… I should've seen him sooner… who he really was, who we were when we were together…
"I didn't think he'd keep a relationship from me for a year and a half," she commented. "With Lisa we knew immediately. He even brought her round for Christmas, that one time."
"I think he was worried you wouldn't accept him," Jack offered. "Being with me, I mean. It's not just that I'm a man. I'm also his boss."
"Well, he's a bloody fool for thinking that," she declared. "So what happened? Where do you think he is?"
"He was supposed to come over to my place after work," Jack said, distorting the truth since telling her they were playing naked hide and seek around the Hub before falling into bed in Jack's bunker wasn't exactly appropriate. "He never showed up. I looked everywhere. Work, his flat, anywhere I could think of."
"And then everything went to shit with those explosions," Rhiannon supplied, giving him a good reason for not telling her the reality of getting the Rift alert while he was searching the Hub for Ianto as a part of their game and making it down to the vaults in time to see Ianto dematerialize in front of him in a burst of white light. "And you haven't heard from him since," she finished.
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Oh, God."
"Yeah," Jack repeated, looking down into his mug. "It's taken all week to get things back in order from all that. And we've been looking for him, but —"
"You think he got killed? That we won't find his body? That it's under some rubble somewhere?"
"I don't know what happened," Jack said. "I'm holding on to the hope that he's alive somewhere and just can't get back to us."
Rhiannon reached across the table to lay her hand on top of Jack's. She opened her mouth to speak, but the banging of the front door distracted her. From the enthusiastic screaming, she could tell her children were home. She patted his hand and stood.
"I'm sorry, it's the kids. My husband'll be with them."
"I should go," Jack said, rising.
Two children ran into the kitchen, the boy demanding a snack while the girl asked for milk and for Rhiannon to look at a picture she drew. Their father followed them in and eyed Jack suspiciously.
"Who's this, then?" he asked Rhiannon, gesturing to Jack.
"Shut up, he's Ianto's boyfriend," she hissed, pushing him from the room, but not quickly enough for Jack to miss their exchange and Johnny's less than polite response. He picked up his mug and put it in the sink. The girl looked at him curiously.
"I'm Mica," she declared, grabbing his hand to shake it enthusiastically. "That's David," she added, indicating her brother, who had his head in the fridge.
"Nice to meet you, Mica. I'm Jack."
"Mum said you're Uncle Ianto's boyfriend. Are you?" she asked. "Where is he?"
"Oh, Uncle Ianto couldn't make it today," Jack said quickly, ignoring the boyfriend question for the moment. "He's, um, busy."
Mica sighed. "He's always busy." For a moment, Jack thought he'd be able to leave, but Mica took the arm of his coat and pulled him towards the back door. "You can play with me now," she told him.
"Oi, Mica, let him alone!" Rhiannon's husband shouted from the kitchen door. "Go to your room, now. You, too, David."
"What?" David asked. "But I want to watch —"
"To your rooms, both of you."
Reluctantly, both children left the kitchen. Rhiannon reentered and introduced them. "This is my husband, Johnny. Johnny, this is Jack." The two men shook hands.
"Rhia tells me Ianto's missing?" Johnny asked.
"I'm doing everything I can to find him," Jack replied. "I'll tell you as soon as I know anything."
"We'll call you if he turns up here first," Rhiannon reassured him. "And —" she broke off. "Come to supper, some time. We'd like to get to know you, even if Ianto's not here." Suddenly she burst into tears, and Johnny enfolded her in a hug. "Because he's not here," she whispered into Johnny's chest. "So we can — so we can support each other."
"I will," Jack promised, even as he wondered if it was a promise he'd be able to keep. He left the house, his own head filled with sorrow and regrets.
.
.
.
tbc