Owen loses his temper …
Who?
Chapter Six
"What the hell's got into you, Ianto!?" stormed Owen. He had dragged the taller man out of the cog door and waited until it had shut behind them before speaking. "Jack's got enough to cope with without you sticking the knife in!"
"You said we should tell him things." Ianto projected a calm image but inside he was trembling. He knew he'd gone too far.
"I said we should answer his questions! Not volunteer pieces of information like ' Oh by the way, you're fucking immortal'!" The quote was delivered in a creditable Welsh accent. "What the hell were you thinking about!?"
"He deserves to know."
"He deserves to be treated with bloody respect! Is this because he doesn't remember you? Is that it?" Ianto flinched at the words and Owen cursed long and fluently. "You bastard! Kick a man while he's down, why don't you!?" Owen paced up and down in the small space at the foot of the stairs. "Not half an hour ago that bloke was screaming because of the memories he's getting back. Screaming! When was the last time you heard Jack bloody Harkness scream? And I don't need to hear about your love life! This is bloody hard for him and you go and throw him a curve ball like that?"
Ianto paled; he had not known that Jack had been upset. And he had never heard Jack scream, even in bed he took everything Ianto could do to him without screaming - in pleasure or pain. He must be in a bad way. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"It's not me you should be apologising to, fuckwit! Oh get out of my sight! If I see you again today it'll be too bloody soon. Go up to the Tourist Office and stay there." Owen opened the cog door and re-entered the Hub leaving a shattered Ianto to climb the stairs alone.
-ooOoo-
The pizzas lay abandoned. After Owen had stalked out pushing Ianto before him, the girls had tried to explain to Jack but were confusing him more than helping. "Are you telling me," he said, cutting across Gwen, "that I don't die?"
"No, you do die but then you come back again." He stared at her horrified. "Sometimes it's just a few minutes other times it's longer. It was three days once." He continued to stare.
"Jack, it's just part of who you are," began Toshiko. "We don't understand it and I don't think you do either, not fully. You've never told us where it came from, again I'm not sure you know."
The door alarm sounded and Owen came back into the Hub - alone. He joined the others and looked round at them. Gwen and Toshiko looked flustered and Jack was just staring ahead, not a good sign. A glance from Gwen told Owen that the girls had not been able to explain Ianto's revelation satisfactorily. Which was not surprising, considering they knew so little about it themselves.
"I've banished that twat Ianto to the Tourist Office. Jack, I'm sorry he blurted it out like that but as I'm sure Gwen and Tosh have told you, it is true. You don't stay dead."
"You're all mad, stark staring mad." Jack had decided that they had to be lying, no one was immortal. Everyone died, sooner or later, and he was no different. "You want me to believe this rubbish for some reason. In fact, thinking about it, I have no proof that you even know me, that all the other stuff you've told me is true. You kidnapped me and brought me here and now you're messing with my head!" Jack was standing, as close to hysterical as he could get.
"I think you should calm down, Jack," said Owen, moving closer. "It's been a rough day for you and it's only lunchtime. Just sit down, drink your coffee and we can talk." He put a hand on his boss's arm and pulled him gently back to the sofa. "That's right, sit down."
With Jack back on the sofa it grew quieter and the tension lessened. Toshiko and Gwen sat at the desks with Owen beside Jack. They all drank the coffee, which was still warm, and said nothing for a while.
"I'm sorry, went a bit crazy there." Jack smiled slightly. He had had time to think and realised they hadn't had time to falsify those photographs he'd found earlier; he belonged here with these people which made Ianto's revelation even harder to comprehend.
"Oh, Jack, it's all right, sweetheart." Gwen was up and hugging him in an instant. "You're among friends here, really."
"That's good to know." His arms were round her, enjoying the feel and smell of her. "And this is good too," he smirked, hands wandering.
"Get off!" she exclaimed, releasing him and sitting down again. "Can tell you're back to normal!" They laughed and that relieved the tension some more.
"You may like to hear what we found at the house," put in Toshiko, thinking the discussion might help him recover his emotional balance. "The explosion was caused by an alien device that released neutrino energy. This is part of it." She held up the evidence bag and handed it to him when he reached for it.
Gwen spoke up. "It wasn't your fault, Jack. Near as we can tell, you were outside the back door trying to get in to retrieve this thing before it went off but were just too late. I haven't told you all yet but I learnt something from the neighbour's son." She had their full attention. "The mother was a dead end, just ranting on about James Ingalls doing her boy out of money while still professing to say no ill of the dead. Bloody hypocrite. The boy, Alfie, told me a lot more. Apparently, he scavenged a lot of stuff around the estate and from his descriptions they're all alien. We should look into that sometime, Tosh."
"With the stuff we've found ourselves, this place is a definite hot spot. I'll plot the Rift activity, first chance I get." Toshiko turned to her PC and added a note to her tasks list.
"Thanks. According to Alfie, he found one or two items a month and always took them to Ingalls. They'd look at them together, in the kitchen, and if they thought it might be worth something, Ingalls took it to the market trader. But he gave the money to Alfie, usually five or ten quid a time but once it was thirty. Seems the boy is saving the money to buy some new trainers that cost a bomb."
"So Ingalls wasn't ripping the boy off," said Toshiko, looking at Owen. The doctor had the grace to look embarrassed. "Did the boy find anything recently?"
"Yes, he did." Gwen took out her mobile and flipped through the messages. "He and Ingalls looked at it last night, in the kitchen. Alfie took a picture of it, for his records – we may want to look at those – and this is what he found." She handed the mobile to Toshiko who looked at it while downloading it to her system.
"It matches the fragment we found. I don't recognise it but it could be Newok in design. What do you think, Jack?" Download complete, Toshiko handed the mobile across without thinking and only when he had taken it did she add, "Oh, sorry, you won't remember."
"Still like to look," he said with a smile. The photo showed an elliptical object, dark green with black markings. He compared it with the fragment he still held and a wisp of memory came back. "It's a Kattaran energy ball." He looked round at them, "I seem to remember the strangest things."
Gwen laughed and Toshiko swung round to her desk again and quickly accessed the database. She called up the description and sat back, a smile on her face. "You're right, that's just what it is. Well done." She beamed at Jack who felt like a dog who had performed a trick. She took back the fragment and compared it with the more detailed description on the screen.
Gwen accepted her mobile and put it away. "Could it have caused the explosion?"
"Oh yes, definitely. It uses neutrino energy and the readings match the ones that triggered the original alert Jack responded to this morning. It's directional and was obviously pointing towards the front of the house. Lucky for you, Jack."
"Thought I couldn't die," he joked lamely, the subject still a difficult one.
"You can't but it'd be a bit uncomfortable to wake up under a ton of rubble," pointed out Owen.
"I suppose." It was not something Jack wanted to think about right then; he'd rather forget about the whole matter but somehow he felt it wouldn't be that easy. The one thing he wanted to forget, he couldn't. "So those people died because of that piece of … space junk?"
"Yeah." The others sobered at the reminder that three people had lost their lives that morning. Owen broke the ensuing silence.
"If you don't need me for a while, the postmortems are being done this afternoon. I know the pathologist and he said I could sit in. Might be worth it, in case I can learn any more about the blast."
"Sounds like a good idea," agreed Gwen. "We can hold the fort here."
"All right with you, Jack?" Owen asked.
He smiled. "Thanks for the courtesy but I'm not in charge right now."
"I meant, will you be all right?" Owen stood, hands in his pockets looking down at the older man.
"I'll survive – anything by the sounds of it!" He laughed, attempting to put himself and the others at their ease.
-ooOoo-
An hour later and the Hub was quiet again. Owen had gone to watch the postmortems, Toshiko was lost in her work and Gwen had disappeared to the archives to find a file. On a mission, Jack sauntered past Toshiko and through the cog door. He didn't think she'd stop him but he'd rather not give her the opportunity. He took the lift up to ground level and walked back through the corridor. He wasn't sure he would find the back of the secret door but it was clearly marked with 'Fire Exit' which made him smile. Taking a deep breath he pressed the release button and walked through.
Ianto glanced over when the door opened and straightened when he saw who was coming through. He had assumed it would be Gwen again. She had already come up once to bawl him out and he was expecting another blast of her anger. Nothing was said as Jack walked fully into the Office, glanced around and then stopped in front of Ianto.
"Owen tells me you and I have a history together. I don't remember it and I don't remember you. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If that causes you a problem, just say so and I'll walk out that door and never come back." He gestured to the door leading to the outside. "But if you say stay, then I need you to help me not make a bad situation worse." He fixed Ianto with a steady gaze. "Your choice."
"Where would you go?" Ianto's voice was husky with emotion.
Jack shrugged. "Who knows? I'll find someone to take me in, have the feeling I'm that kind of guy." He turned and walked to the door only to find it locked.
"I didn't say I wanted you to go."
"Thought that was the way your mind was working," Jack was looking at him again, one hand still on the door handle.
"You're wrong. I want you to stay."
Next time, Jack and Ianto talk and there's a Rift alert …