Disclaimer: The usual disclaimer applies here. I don't own, and hope you don't sue.
A/N: I'm sorry for the infrequent updates on all of my stories, but real life bit me in the butt for not giving it enough attention lately.
This is the chapter from which this story goes really different from 'TLLM'. Hope is going to be at least as much enjoyed. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first two chapters. And a special thank you to my wonderful beta Brownbug for her great work.
Ianto left the room feeling strangely distressed by Mrs Saxon's words. Was he so transparent in his feelings and insecurities? He had worked hard on projecting indifference and schooling his features into an absolutely impassive mask when needed. Time was, he could hide a Cyberman in the basement for the better part of six months and no one would pick up on it; however, this woman was able to see through his carefully constructed facade in just a few minutes with him So now, apparently, he had trouble telling a white lie - he wasn't sure whether it made him a better person or a fool. Was Lucy watching only him or the whole team? Or had her husband researched each of them thoroughly while he was preparing his campaign for PM?
He felt drained and nervous just from talking to the woman for less than ten minutes. How was he going to handle having her around for an indefinite period of time? Desperately, he did everything he could to prevent her words from affecting him, by reminding himself that he was an accepted part of the team now, Jack was taking him out on the field and he had even saved their lives and subdued the bad guys in the last ordeal with the alien whale. He had managed to get himself free from his bonds; it was thanks to Toshiko that he was able to do that now. He had been so angry at being helpless at Brecon Beacons and Toshiko had offered to teach him how to break free from rope bondage. He had been planning to try his new-found skills on Jack someday in the bedroom. The though made him smile, before he remembered the way Jack had gazed at him. There wasn't anything to feel guilty about. Maybe he should feel a bit embarrassed for listening to Lucy, but not guilty, he hadn't done anything. Although, he had contemplated it for a moment, or felt like he could. Was Jack able to sense this? Was that why he looked at him as if he was seeing something he didn't like?
For the first time in months, Ianto felt the urge for a smoke. He hurriedly made his exit through the Hub and up to the Tourist Office, to take out his hidden stash of cigarettes and calm his nerves. The moment he opened the door and lit up, a family with a couple of kids passed him and entered the shop. Sighing, he flicked his cigarette into the water and followed them. Had he been more on top of things, he would have hated himself for throwing things in the water. Usually, he would have thoroughly scolded anyone else for doing something so environmentally unfriendly. But at that moment he couldn't care less. He had some annoying tourists to deal with, when he could have been doing some real work after the quake that Cardiff suffered the previous night.
He cringed when he saw one of the kids touching one of the maps with greasy fingers, while her mother pretended not to notice. It should have been blatantly obvious how perfectly clean the Information Centre was, but the parents probably took it for granted that since they were on holiday, the onus was on the staff to keep everything tidy. Even if their little brats went around destroying it all. This kind of customers were the worst for him - the spoiled, annoying brats whose parents allowed them just about anything so they would keep quiet. Mind you, often the parents themselves were almost as bad, expecting him to bow and scrape to them the moment they entered the shop. In moments like this, Ianto really preferred the drunken English or American students. At least they were fun and hurried to leave.
He wondered when was the last time he had gone out with his friends and got plastered. Most people his age did that almost every night, or at least every weekend. He, on the other hand, lived as he was at least ten years older. It should bother him, but he wasn't surprised that it didn't. He didn't really have friends here in Cardiff, not since he left for London, intentionally distancing himself from everyone he had grown up with. And now all the friends he had in London were either dead or in a psychiatric hospital, somewhere he was probably heading to as well. At least dealing with the obnoxious family kept him away from Jack and the Hub, despite the sticky and greasy fingerprints the children would leave behind before they left. So, he smiled pleasantly at them and offered them all the information and post cards they wanted. Of course, the maps that he offered them were outdated - he hadn't had the time to restock on maps while running around the city chasing aliens - but it's not as if they will notice or care.
He cringed again, seeing the little boy taking his candy out of his mouth, rolling it around in his fingers, and then putting it back in his mouth, before smearing his hands all over the carefully polished wood on Ianto's desk. Maybe he should let his frustration out by telling the boy off, before pointedly wiping the desk, but then gave up on the idea, sure that it wouldn't really bother the boy's parents. When the family left, he contemplated going outside once again to try and have a smoke, but there was too much cover up work to do after the quake that had resulted from the opening of the rift. In the end, Ianto decided that it would do him some good to immerse himself in the well-practiced task of creating a cover story to divert the attention of citizens and police alike from the events in Cardiff. It had become a given, really. The population of Cardiff was so used to strange occurrences and the fact that they weren't safe in their city and homes, that they did not bat an eyelid at any explanation he happened to come up with. Ianto suspected that even if, just as an experiment, he told them that all this was happening because of aliens and a space-time rift, they would just nod and curse Torchwood for not acting on time. Torchwood was probably the worst kept secret in Cardiff, and it was no wonder, since the Captain liked to sweep into a room all swishing coats and flashing smiles and just stomp over everything. Not to mention the big ostentatious car with 'Torchwood' clearly engraved on the roof. No wonder they had to use more Retcon in a single year than some of the other teams had in the past for almost all of their history. He sometimes wondered why he bothered administering any Retcon at all.
Gwen was livid now that she knew who their visitor was. While Ianto was dealing with the cover up, or sulking up in his own domain of the Tourist Office, Gwen had done some research on Lucy Saxon. At first, everything appeared relatively normal. An easy and calm, if strict, childhood. Not too bright, married the promising young politician Harold Saxon and so on. Of course, everyone knew about her disastrous marriage and the end of it by her own hand. Officially, Lucy had been diagnosed as clinically insane. Unofficially, however, she had more motives to kill her husband than just her madness.
Gwen wasn't satisfied with the obvious answers. She was never one to stop until she got to the bottom of the things, and she had a gut-feeling that there had been more to it. The dignified, elegant woman, so in love with her husband, and always so immaculately stylish, simply didn't add up with the absent and manic looking woman in the cells. Lucy Saxon looked broken, and walked as if living in a dream, when just a few weeks ago she had apparently been happy and the epitome of the perfect wife. Not being able to discover the truth irked Gwen more than anything else, so she bribed Tosh, by promising her everything she could if the Japanese woman would use her technical genius to dig deeper. It paid off. Tosh had an unequalled ability to enter just about anywhere and rarely could she be stopped if she was determined to see a file, no matter how strongly encrypted it was.
Before long, she had broken into the UNIT classified records and pulled the real file on Lucy Saxon, which was quite different from the official one. It spoke of terrors and a year that never happened, of fires in the sky and slaughter and of human heroics, such as the tale of Martha Jones walking the Earth.
"You owe me big time for this, Gwen," Tosh had said sternly, but Gwen could see the fire in her eyes, the growing excitement at being able to opens something so strongly locked. "If they detect or catch me, I'll be done for."
"They won't, Tosh, you're too good," Gwen said, grinning at her. She thanked the technician and almost ran towards Jack's office, in the hope of confronting him in there about Lucy and what the implications of her arrival were to the team.
Unfortunately, Jack was already leaving in somewhat of a hurry. Probably in a rush to find his lover and talk to him, Gwen thought. She had already guessed they had quarrelled, going by the way Ianto had left earlier. Well, she could understand the Captain wanting to placate his lover, but right now they had business to do, and Gwen needed to talk to him. He could attend to the personal matter later. She extended her hand and caught the sleeve of his great-coat, stopping him in his tracks. He threw her an annoyed look, but stopped nevertheless, and waited mutely to see what she had to say. Gwen knew that maybe she should ask him to go to his office for some privacy, but as bad as it might have seemed in the eyes of the others, she didn't have any problem in confronting him in front of everyone else - even sometimes to the point of being insubordinate. After all, that was why he had hired her, to question his decisions. And the others needed to know the truth as well, no more secrets.
"Jack," she said firmly, determined not to waver under his penetrating and cold look. "Tell me about Lucy Saxon and the Master."
She asked the question gently and carefully, with all the soft reassurance she had learned in her police work when talking to victims. She was pursuing the truth, which was her main reason to ask, but she had seen his distress and she couldn't leave someone in that much pain without trying to comfort them. Especially someone she cared about as much as Jack.
His stormy blue eyes gazed at her intently, and almost made her squirm and lose her resolve in asking him. Still, it was done now, and Gwen Cooper wasn't one to quit that easily. Jack should know that by now, and not bother trying to intimidate her with his silence and stern glare. So she stared back at him, all soft lines and huge doe eyes, returning his hard stormy glare with soft compassion, covering determined stubbornness.
"Please, Jack," she pleaded, laying a gentle hand on his upper arm. "We need to know what's going on. I need to know."
She watched as Jack fought an inner battle with himself over the reasons for and against telling her what she wanted to know. He puffed out an exaggerated breath and nodded towards his office, where he followed her and closed the door behind them. Jack leaned on the glass for a moment, before and making his way towards his desk and his chair, gesturing for her to take a seat in the chair on the other side. Gwen suddenly felt nervous. The seating arrangements reminded her too strongly of the times she had been called to he headmaster's office back in her school days. She kept her hands between her knees to stop herself from fidgeting, and stared at the wooden surface of the desk, noticing a few deep dents where no doubt Jack had scratched at it with the letter opener in frustration.
"It's part of the time when I was away," Jack started to explain. "Something went wrong and there was a year that never was."
"What do you mean, a year that never was, Jack?"
"It's exactly what I said, a year that never happened." He let out a frustrated huff of breath, visibly unwilling to elaborate, but Gwen knew that if she was persistent enough he would cave in, even if only slightly. So she fixed him with her best glare, silently demanding him to talk to her.
"Well, a year that actually happened, but no one remembers." Jack lifted a hand to stop the questions that were apparently clear on her face. "Let me continue. It was reversed and time corrected itself, how and why doesn't matter. The only thing that is relevant, and you need to know, is that Harold Saxon was responsible for it."
Gwen narrowed her eyes and let out a growl of frustration, fisting her hands in her lap. How typical of Jack Bloody Harkness to throw her a bone and start talking, only to turn all enigmatic on her later and answer with all these ambiguous replies that made as much sense as if he was speaking in Japanese. Less sense, actually - if he did speak in Japanese, at least Toshiko would be able to make out what he was saying.
"You're doing it again, Jack!" she shouted in frustration.
"Doing what exactly?" Jack asked, and Gwen was almost sure that he was doing it on purpose to infuriate her. She was almost sure that she could detect a note of irony in his voice.
"Shutting me out, Jack," she answered, determined to keep calm and get him to share whatever was bothering him. "I thought you trusted me! Aren't I the one you always turn to when you have some secret to share? Or did that change once you started dating Iatno?"
"Oh, don't you start with Ianto now," Jack gritted through his teeth.
"But it's the truth! You don't talk as much to me as you used to." She realised that she sounded petulant and jealous and for a moment she felt guilty towards Rhys. But she soon pushed the guilt out of her mind. It wasn't as if she was actually going to take a chance with Jack, he wouldn't even offer it. And she was still going to marry Rhys in the end, so why should she feel guilty for liking the promise of excitement that she could only dream about? Rhys was soft and safe, and a really great cook and loved her, that's why she loved him. Jack...Jack was just the unattainable dream, the dangerous, enigmatic hero that she would always worship, but never have. Still, here and now she needed answers.
"We need to know, Jack," she continued stubbornly. "Is it connected to your Doctor? Are you going to leave us without explanation all over again? Because the team deserves better, and certainly Ianto most of all."
"I said don't start on me about the team or Ianto!" Jack stood up from his chair and started to pace nervously around the confines of his small office. "You want to get some reassurance, to see if you stand a last chance before your wedding, fine. But don't turn it into a team matter!"
Gwen stood as well, not liking being put on the chair like a school girl while Jack towered over her and tried to intimidate her. She grabbed his upper arm and stopped him in his tracks, leaning over to be almost face to face with him.
"Oh, yes, it's about the team, because you have no idea what it did to all of us!" she hissed angrily at him. "You wake up from being dead , kiss Ianto, forgive Owen and then fuck right off gallivanting around the Universe. But we were the ones who had to pick up the pieces and learn to carry on without our leader and not knowing what to do. So, I'm asking you again, Jack Fucking Harkness, are you going to leave us again? Are you going to leave me again?" She tried to be professional and to talk only about the team, but she couldn't help putting the last personal inquiry into it.
"If I have to," Jack said curtly, pulling his arm free. "This discussion is over now. Go back to your work, Gwen. I believe you have a phone call to the police to make."
Gwen growled angrily, trying to keep her hold on his sleeve, but losing her grip when he yanked his arm away. So the whole conversation was a waste of time, she didn't have much more information than she had before she started it. And he never really gave her many answers, bloody enigmatic git, as if he didn't have enough secrets that he was keeping from them already.
"Oh no, Jack this conversation is not over, not yet!" she hissed at him before slamming the office door with enough force to rattle and possibly crack the glass.
Gwen stormed out towards Ianto's den, intending to get him to sort out the mess with his boyfriend that he had created. It wasn't fair for the others to suffer Jack's dark moods just because Ianto was sulking somewhere and didn't want to talk to him. They were both so proud of how oh-so professional they were by not letting their personal lives impact on their job, but sometimes she was sure that it did without either of them realising it.
She passed Toshiko, who seemed once again dead to the world, buried in her binary codes or network programming or whatever it was she was doing with her tech. There were times when it made Gwen wonder if Tosh would be happier if she created herself some cyber-programmed boyfriend, because she was too socially awkward to find a real one. She instantly felt like a bitch for thinking like that and resolved to take Tosh out with her on some of her girlfriend nights out with Margaret and the girls. Maybe she could get Rhys to take Ianto out as well; God knows the boy was no less socially awkward than Tosh, despite having a partner. After all what kind of a partner for a twenty five year old man was Jack, who was their boss, about hundred years older than them and lived in a hole? Then again, Rhys, Drunken Dave and Banana Boat…maybe not. She had a feeling Ianto wouldn't think too highly of their company.
When she reached the tourist office, Gwen had a momentary twinge of doubt over disturbing her colleague and interrupting his work. He looked annoyed and too caught up in whatever report he was doing. She thought maybe it would be better to let him do whatever he was doing and go back to try and talk some more sense into Jack. At that moment her phone beeped at her and she took it out of her jeans, suddenly remembering that she was supposed to make a call to Andy and the Cardiff police station, but it could wait. The message was from Rhys and it was telling her that their apartment had suffered mild damage from the quake; the bathroom was completely ruined and would need refurbishing. She needed to make sure that Rhys was all right and to hell with calling the police and being the liaison between Jack and officials. For once, Jack would have to be diplomatic, because she was going home, and nothing short of the Rift opening again was going to stop her.
She hurried back down the lift and into the Hub and rushed towards Jack, who was talking quietly with Toshiko while she was working on her computer. It was probably about some binary code or something that would sound as alien to Gwen as the inscription on the small transport pot they had found a few days ago. The one that Ianto was still working on deciphering, not giving up, with his typical Welsh stubbornness.
"Jack, I'm going home," Gwen shouted from the cage of the entrance. She knew that he would have an objection, but in defiance of him she turned around and prepared to leave, hoping to get out before he had a chance to say anything. She even almost made it.
"What?" Jack shouted back angrily. "You can't just decide to walk out in the middle of work, especially not after such a serious case."
It was enough to make her blood boil and the fire in it flare with anger. She turned sharply back around to face the interior of the Hub and strode determinedly down the metal stairs and catwalk, her heels clattering an angry staccato not unlike the report of a continuously firing machine gun.
"Oh, you bloody hypocrite!" she yelled in Jack's face, her face almost close enough to his to brush their noses together. "You tell me to hang on to my normal life and not let it drift, you make all these excuses why you won't talk to me and tell me the truth when I ask you, because you want to protect my personal life, and then when I need to go and handle it…what do you do? You tell me I'm not being professional!"
She waved her phone angrily at her boss to emphasise her point, although with all that waving about, he most likely couldn't see what it was on the screen anyway.
"Rhys says that the house has suffered after the quake, and if I work to keep this bloody city safe, but fucking Torchwood can't keep my own house safe, then what's the point? I'm going to see Rhys now!" She finally ran out of steam, but the last was said with such finality that Jack could only nod, albeit she could see that he was still angry at her, and let her go. Without any further comment, Gwen stalked out of the Hub, not even stopping to greet Ianto in the office, before she was practically running down the street towards home.
Debora wasn't the brightest of the girls in the area, but she didn't need to be all that bright to know that she hated her job. She hated her boss as well, and even more she hated the drunken customers who came here every Saturday or Sunday to watch the rugby. Mind you, she wouldn't mind it so much if they just watched the rugby and argued lightly about the game. That would have made her job boring, but bearable. What she couldn't stand was when they lost interest in the game once they had enough to drink, and turned their interest towards her, with their dirty jokes about barmaids and frankly obscene suggestions. Not that she couldn't handle herself, of course she could, she had worked this job for long enough. Debora had even broken up some bar brawls before the city plonks had showed up, but she was just tired of dealing with them. When she dropped out of University, unable to pay the fees there any longer, and returned to Cardiff, she thought that she had left the dirty, dank pubs behind and imagined herself working as a spectacular bartender in some posh and nice night club. All she had managed until now was the last three years in 'The Dragon'.
It wasn't much, but at least it paid the rent and the bills. Sometimes there could even be the occasional cute guy who would catch her eye, and if she was lucky enough, have a little chat with while tending to him. Sometimes there would be the occasional girl too; Debora wasn't all that averse to chatting up a girl if she had no luck with a guy. Right now there was a guy that she had seen only two times before and she was trying to get his name, if only she could get across to his side of the bar and take his order instead of that bitch, Tracy. The guy wasn't anything special really, probably an English student. He was wearing an ordinary dark blue polo shirt and jeans, but she was bored enough, and single for the last six months, so everyone even a little interesting and single would be worth a shot. Of course, Tracy must have thought the same, because it looked as if she was determined to take his orders for the entire night.
Well, Debora would be damned if she let that self–absorbed blonde bitch get in her way to finally finding some excitement in her life. God knew, Tracy had already changed three boyfriends in the last few months and was only working the bar because she needed to earn money to go on a trip. Debora, on the other hand, desperately needed some reassurance that the dull job, and single life with take away in front of the telly for the last half a year, hadn't done permanent damage to her self-esteem and social skills. She excused herself from her side of the bar and pushed Tracy out of her way.
"Would you be a dear and go tend my place?" Debora asked sweetly. If her smile and voice were any sweeter, they would probably have rotted Tracy's teeth. Of course, Tracy couldn't say no, because she was almost new at the bar and Debora had been there for so long she almost ran it as a manager at the moment. God knew, the owner couldn't do it on his own or he would probably have drunk the entire bar stock of lagers and scotch, probably with some company come to drink for free.
"How may I help?" she asked the guy, finally getting near him after a week.
"A pint of Fosters and your number," the guy asked of her and she was right, he did have an English accent.
Smiling at him, she nodded and hastily scribbled her number on a piece of tissue paper before turning to comply with his order. She took a pint glass and pushed the tap to fill it with the lager.
The guy looked down at the piece of paper and smiled. It was a nice smile - a bit oversized, but she supposed he was probably out of practise himself. Maybe he had taken some time off from revising for exams at University and decided to chill out with a few pints. He didn't appear to have any company, which meant he didn't have to cut the chat in a hurry to get back to some table.
"So, Debora," he started, a bit nervously. "When do you finish tonight?"
She forgot about the tap for a moment and let go of the level, not that there appeared to be much lager coming out. Great, exactly when she wanted to impress someone, the beer barrel would run out and she would have to replace it. That was another aspect of her job that she hated, that no one bothered to make sure that the beer was properly stocked when the pub opened. If she wasn't there to check from time to time, and re-fill the barrels, none of her colleagues would do it. They'd probably prefer to say that they had ran out of beer, rather than go down to the cellar and bring a refill up. It was a man's job lifting and carrying the barrels, not a woman's, but her useless boss wouldn't even think of doing it and the others were too lazy.
"I'm sorry, it seems that you might have to wait for the Fosters," she apologised, feeling embarrassed. "I'll just be a minute and then I'll give you the pint."
They guy seemed happy enough to wait for his drink and nodded and smiled encouragingly at her, which at least worked to lift her spirits a bit. If he didn't mind waiting on the bar for something that was clearly a staff error, then maybe things could work there. That's unless Tracy got in the way while Debora was down in the cellar.
She turned around and shouted over her shoulder from the side bar door, hoping that the guy would hear her over the volume of the TV and the cheers of the rugby fans.
"Oh, and I'll be off at 11:30," she called. "But you never told me your name."
"Craig," the guy shouted back to her, grinning.
"What'd you say?" she asked, unable to hear his answer in the sudden rising noise after Wales' score.
"Craig," he yelled again. He was probably trying to be louder, but she still couldn't hear what he had said. She shook her head and thought that she would just have to ask him later, after she brought the re-fill up to the bar.
Reaching the door wasn't easy in the crowded pub; it was amazing how impractical the old idiot of a boss could be, situating the bar in the place probably the furthest away from the door to the cellar. Still, after having to weave and push her way through the throng of hot, sweaty and drunk bodies, Debora was almost grateful for the cool air of the staff stairway that led towards the cellar. She knew that once she had spent more than a couple of minutes there it would be too cold. But at the moment, even the freezing October air was better than what was inside her work-place. Reaching for the light switch in the cellar, she never managed to turn it on before the whole place shook violently. It was absolutely terrifying. She had never experienced an earthquake in the UK before. She wasn't even sure if there was such a thing as earthquakes on the island.
From what she had seen on the TV, or heard in classes, Debora knew that she should find the safest place and hide there until the earthquake was over. But if it wasn't a natural earthquake, then were the rules of safety the same? She wasn't sure and rationally she knew that she should stay where she was, because going up the stairs might be unsafe, but she was scared and didn't want to be alone here in the dark. So, taking the risk, she left the cellar without the barrel of lager. If someone wanted it they could bloody well come down here and get it themselves. Halfway up the stairs, she could hear the screams of the patrons in the bar, part of which had probably sobered up hastily, and objects falling down the shelves and smashing. It seemed that as fast as the quake had started, it stopped, because suddenly she couldn't hear any noise and the place stilled eerily.
She pushed the door open, and it felt as if she had walked through another door into an unfamiliar room. Gone was the large plasma TV showing the rugby, and in its place was a small black and white TV, with a rounded screen. The patrons seemed just as drunk as the ones she had pushed through earlier, but now they were dressed like her granddad in the pictures her mum had spread around the house. It was like some kind of surreal dream. Debora was almost sure that something must have hit her during the earthquake and knocked her down. Only, she seemed real. She was still wearing her pub uniform, not an outfit like her granny's. The logo of 'The Dragon' was still pinned over the head of the bartenders. But the bar was smaller and there was only one barman, who was filling pints with lager with such a sour expression that it would have curdled the milk, if someone had actually ordered cappuccino.
Her legs felt weak and she started to shake under the shock. Squishing the desire to call out and see if anyone would hear her and tell her what was going on, Debora made her way towards the door, moving as inconspicuous as she could, while on the very edge of starting to hyperventilate. She thought that maybe she should actually call for attention and try to find what had happened to her, but she was scared that if she did someone would hear her and answer, and that would make it real.
Later, when after the earthquake was over, and Debora Willies failed to show up from the cellar with the barrel of lager, her boss would go down and find her standing there, staring sightlessly at the opposite wall, without any recognition or reaction to him or anyone who tried to talk to her.