The worst thing about being a ghost, Lisa thought, was that she couldn't do anything to keep Ianto safe.
She had gotten her field training first; he always joked that he liked dangerous women. The statement didn't hold water, not when they cuddled and laughed, walking around London hand-in-hand, ducking in and out of parks and coffee shops.
Katie in the cubicle next to her always said that Lisa had finally gotten her fairy tale ending.
Ironic. Katie was the last person Lisa saw with human eyes—lying over the top of her desk, blood surrounding her head, hollow green eyes boring into her own as she was dragged away to the conversion units.
The best thing about being a ghost, Lisa knew, was the lack of cyber parts. Her hair was free; her head and neck would have finally felt the air. She didn't remember what that felt like. She couldn't feel anything, not the sun on her face, not the blood on her hands, not the beating of Ianto's heart as he hid behind crumbling buildings.
"On your left!" she shouted, making no sound.
Ianto ducked to the right and aimed his gun to the left. He rolled to avoid falling on sharp rocks, looked quickly to the sides, then stood and kept running. Lisa had no choice but to follow.
She didn't worry about tripping, but Ianto did. His boots were sturdy but battered; the hems of his jeans were tattered and covered in blood Lisa didn't want to think about. She had no qualms about viscera, not after everything, but it clung to Ianto, now.
Death.
Death, destruction—Lisa would think herself overdramatic if not for the fact that Ianto had also acquired a ghost.
.oOo.
Ianto's lung capacity had gotten surprisingly good. He'd always been a good runner and thought it served him well in Torchwood. It was nothing compared to this apocalyptic landscape. The sun stubbornly shone, the rain fell when it felt like it, and the breeze blew so merrily it was almost possible to forget the smell of death it carried over the land.
He scrambled over some debris and ducked into a half-standing building. There was no heat or water but there was a door and no windows. He leaned against the wall and lowered his head onto his knees; he'd lift it in a second and check for any holes the Toclafane could come through, but he needed a breather.
Just for a moment.
He was safe.
.oOo.
Lisa didn't need to sit, she didn't get tired, but she lowered herself to Ianto's level anyway. She put a hand on his arm; neither felt it. She leaned her head against his; nothing.
She lifted her head. If nothing else, she could keep an eye out when Ianto couldn't. Her hand clenched into a fist. If she had anything to worry between her fingers, she would, but her clothes were just as immaterial as her body.
She listened. Nothing. Just the faint creaking of old buildings and abandoned cities. She'd gotten used to it over the past months, when Ianto abandoned refugee camps and took to the cities, searching for survivors, searching for purpose.
Ianto lifted his head now, too, making a show—for who?—of leaning it casually back onto the wall when he was really keeping an ear out for danger.
How well could he still hear? He'd never said it out loud, but it was obvious he was still feeling the effects of the explosion they'd made it through several weeks ago.
Ianto's lips parted as he let out small breaths. They were chapped. Stubble covered his cheeks, uneven over a cut that had long ago become a scar. Lisa thought he looked handsome with facial hair but Ianto had never liked it, mumbling something about his father the one time she'd asked why.
He opened his eyes and their gaze passed right through Lisa's. If she was capable of crying, Lisa would be pushing back tears.
.oOo.
Ianto slept with his back to the wall, one hand clutched around a knife.
His ears rung with memories and the remnants of a weeks-long injury he'd never gotten help for. His back ached against the cold wall, bruises and insufficient insulation uniting; yet the pain didn't stop him sleeping, exhaustion pulling him under.
He closed his eyes and saw chaos. He didn't wake up, didn't even move, because the dreams were nothing compared to reality. Ianto had never been particularly artistic or creative, never exceptional; his survival was an outlier, but his habit of doing so trained him well to ignore nightmares.
He knew he was living on borrowed time, was already halfway dead. It only made sense to use that time to help.
.oOo.
Lisa lay down next to Ianto, turning her back to him to pretend that he knew she was there. She closed her eyes but the action was pointless, ghosts didn't need to sleep, and opened them to meet darkness.
She made herself comfortable, if comfortable meant moving a little to the side. She could almost pretend that she'd only woken up for a second, but because she hadn't fallen asleep, the fantasy didn't last.
A ghost's eyes, Lisa had discovered, were better than a human's. She moved a hand over the earth, miming playing with the dust, moving it side to side as if drawing patterns. Nothing moved but at least her fingers didn't get dirty; Lisa tried not to think of what she would give to let that happen.
She sighed, the exhale made no sound. She swallowed against a nonexistent lump in her throat.
In her chest she felt dawn's approach.
To the side she felt a movement. She had no body, nothing other than a consciousness vaguely tied to the memory of a body, and felt the Toclafane before if approached the building.
She sat up. "Ianto!"
.oOo.
Ianto started awake.
His vision was blurred from sleep but the motions were so ingrained in his body it only took him moments to gather his supplies, sling his rucksack over his back, and scramble out of the back corner, knife replaced by a scavenged gun.
He ran soundlessly over the uneven ground. Pebbles, in deference to the night, sunk into the ground rather than dispersing around his footsteps. On the horizon, dawn was rising. Behind him, a band of Toclafane made their way through the city's ruins.
He took a sharp turn, then another, running until the ruins were yet another memory. It wasn't safer in the woods and he still didn't feel safe in the countryside, but the Toclafane had a harder time moving through the thicket. Ianto himself stumbled more and more, vision blurring as the sun rose.
Just a little more. There had to be a camp here somewhere.
Ianto hadn't spent a night with other people in months—only occasionally, when he brought survivors to one of the camps, or when they needed to stop on the way. It was easier moving alone, taking turns and stopping based on his own instincts.
"Left," he whispered to himself; it almost made him feel like someone was by his side.
.oOo.
"Left." Lisa nodded and followed.
She walked ahead of Ianto sometimes, and sometimes behind him, and sometimes at his side. She didn't like it, not being able to hold his hand, waiting for him to turn his head and meet her eyes but knowing that he never would.
She was on his scarred side. His face had changed so much but was still so familiar. Lisa wasn't sure if it was because he had retained some former innocence or if she had just spent so much time with him, she didn't notice it changing.
It had been months. She remembered dying. She remembered hearing Ianto's sobs and not feeling his hands trying to save her. She remembered pain but wasn't sure if it had been his or hers. She remembered healing, her head becoming clearer, Ianto becoming more confident.
She wasn't sure when her body had formed. When vague feelings of Ianto's experience had turned into an existence by his side. She was a ghost, a memory of a memory, a temporal disturbance, maybe, flickering into existence from close proximity to the Rift. A ghost, no matter the fancy words; an immaterial shadow.
Half-alive, she felt more strongly than she had as a human. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking. She wasn't more alive, but she wasn't dead. Stuck in a limbo, far from life, halfway dead.
Lisa couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't touch, couldn't feel... And yet when Ianto stopped and unwrapped his rations for a quick snack, she stopped with him and sat across from him; it felt almost like a date.
.oOo.
Unable to find a camp, Ianto ate while leaning against a tree.
He made the food last two minutes, put away the wrappers and remains so he couldn't get tracked. He had a minute, was too sore to pull his knees up and let his legs stay in front of him. He hoped no one would see them.
Ianto closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree. The radio and calendar in his rucksack let him keep track of time. It had been months since he'd lived with others; much more time since he'd seen a friendly face.
Almost a year.
He sighed. The time was coming. He was somewhere in England now, maybe even back in Wales.
Ianto swallowed and decided to move his legs anyway; biting back a groan, he rested his chin on his knees and breathed out slowly. His chest hurt. Common sense told him to get it checked out; life experience told him that his ribs were just bruised.
It wasn't worth it.
.oOo.
Back in London, Ianto had never been the life of the party. He'd been awkward and gangly, still growing into his body, stuck between nervously saying too much and hiding himself behind stoic silences. But he'd come out when asked, had taken his seat at any table with confidence. He'd wooed her, after all.
Their first date had been a disaster.
Lisa, then, hadn't been sure if she'd been expecting it. On one hand, she'd known him to be unimpressive; on the other hand, she'd wanted to be impressed.
No, their second date had been much better.
This? Lisa supposed she could think of it as one long extended date. A camping trip. They'd gone on one before; she never wanted to go again.
Ianto led them out of the forest and made camp on the outskirts of one of the only remaining cities. London, maybe; another place she never wanted to return to. The closest thing to feeling Lisa experienced was the phantom pain of partial conversion.
She sat while Ianto stood. He looked up, waiting for something. The sky was clear as it always was now, an ironic move on the atmosphere's part. Lisa had never liked rain, her parents had made fun of her for staying in London if that was the case. As the months went on, the clear weather stayed and stayed. What she wouldn't give for a normal day.
Soon.
Soon, let it be soon.
Lisa took her place next to Ianto as a shadow fell over the ground. She looked up once more just in time to see the Valiant cover the sky like one of the spaceships in the Star Wars films Ianto liked so much.
Ianto's lips moved, forming a familiar word: Doctor.
Lisa wrapped her fingers around his hand; neither felt it. She stepped closer; neither felt the warmth of standing side-by-side with another person. But Lisa's heart calmed and she kept her eyes on Ianto's hopeful face.
"Doctor," she whispered, words dissolving on the air she couldn't feel.
.oOo.
In the shadow of the Valiant, Ianto closed his eyes. He lifted his face as if to the sun and said, "Doctor."
Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.
In Ianto's peripheral vision, the sky changed color, shimmering in and out of blues and purples and golds. His eyelids twitched, fighting to open into the light; they did, the ship was gone, the air wobbled, the clouds shifted.
A hand squeezed around his; Ianto squeezed back, his heart hammering in his chest as the sky shook in and out of existence. The hand squeezed tighter, familiar; Ianto squeezed back and looked sideways, saw a face from the corner of his eye, a face that he couldn't forget, a face that shouldn't be there.
.oOo.
A gasp sounded from beside her, Ianto's mouth opening and his eyes widening in surprise as they met hers.
Lisa gasped; Ianto's eyes, on her, not on the trees or destruction behind her. She opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed, opened it again to say something, but the sky wobbled once more and she was on the ground.
"Oh." Lisa exhaled, bruised chest flush with the rough ground. A breeze sent chills down the back of her neck. She blinked, clearing dust out of her eyes. She grunted and turned her head.
There he was.
Ianto's eyes were closed and Lisa scrambled up, taking her hand out of his grasp, kneeling by his side. It wouldn't be fair if he—oh, there he was.
Lisa let out a breathless laugh as Ianto's eyes opened and he gazed around, unfocused.
.oOo.
"Ow."
Ianto had plenty of experience being knocked out. Somehow, this felt different. His chest hurt, his ears rang more than he'd gotten used to them doing, the ground was uncomfortably digging into his cheek.
He groaned and levered himself upright. It was still day, cloudy now, colder, a light wind blowing, fighting between the freedom of the countryside and the structure of the city.
The city!
Ianto turned abruptly to it and saw skyscrapers, heard cars, felt a laugh bubble up in his chest and let it out. He wasn't quite sure why he expected the city to be gone. Like a bad dream, he remembered chaos and rubble, a sense of danger deep down in his bones, but with every blink the images were chased away, only feelings remaining.
He remembered running, fighting, pain—he lifted an arm to his face. No stubble. Of course there wouldn't be, Ianto hated facial hair. And yet the skin of his cheek felt uneven, almost scarred. His ribs ached with an old injury and the sound wasn't getting through his ears quite right; a deeper, older pain than whatever had knocked him over.
.oOo.
Lisa's hand rested halfway between her and Ianto.
She wanted to call his name, get him to look at her, but was terrified of disappearing.
She worried the grass between her fingers. It slowly disintegrated into shreds, staining her skin, cold and warm all at once. She wanted to wash her hands but wanted to touch the soil even more. It was rough and soft, dirty, reminding her of her childhood, of her mother calling her inside for dinner. Of Ianto and their camping trip, of the months they spent together—months? It felt like months, certainly, but it was fuzzy. Lisa almost didn't remember being present for it all.
She swallowed and took a breath, filling her lungs; breathed out, moving the air around herself.
"Ianto?"
.oOo.
"Lisa?"
His ears must have been deceiving him. Ianto didn't remember why they were so messed up, that had to be the reason why he was seeing Lisa, why he was—
Feeling her hand against his own?
"Lisa?" He reached out, met her skin-to-skin. She was there, solid. "How?"
He didn't want to look away, terrified that she would disappear.
.oOo.
"I don't know." But she suspected. She had been able to feel the—what had they been called? Small, metal monsters. Brutal. Like Cybermen, but not. She'd been able to feel them coming, knowing what was around her without seeing it. Time had gone odd, had turned back, had scrambled their memories of—something.
She suspected—something. Something about time and place and the knowledge that she wasn't supposed to be there, but she was anyway. Knowledge that she wasn't supposed to have of a time that didn't exist; fuzzy, fading, entrenched into her bones and Ianto's face, just a bit older that it should have been.
"I…"
His hands cupped her face. Touched her, feeling warm skin and not cold metal, meeting her eyes and not the horizon behind her. He shifted his weight forward, one hand moving up into her hair.
It had been so long since anyone had done that; it had disappeared under cyber implants, then had ceased to exist alongside the rest of her body.
She smiled, wrapping a hand around his forearm, feeling soft skin, moving up towards his hand and holding, holding, holding on, holding it against her face, tipping it sideways for closer contact, turning her head and pressing a kiss against his palm.
It was warm, rough, kind of dry; trembling, just as she was sure hers was. Unsure, imperfect—alive.