Chapter rating: I don't know anymore…. *rocks in a corner, head in her hands*

A/N: Okay, don't think I'm lazy, I just sort of blocked everything fanfiction-y for the last two weeks because, well RL is a bitch. Now I'm back and it's not good and I know I won't be able to hold my bargain and I'm going to fail miserably but whatever.

And if you haven't watched "Torchwood: Children of the Earth" you might not get like half of this. Mostly because, as I'm unable to re-watch the episodes, I'm running on memory, which means far less dialogues and more descriptions, and not always very detailed one. But I'm trying, I swear!

The Doctor's Child

14. The Choices We Make

The Torchwood team found the location of the abandoned Torchwood warehouse quickly enough and they all settle inside, trying to come up with a plan.

Ianto had been feeling restless and more than stressed since the start of this whole debacle and even the renewed presence of both Jack and their little Evan wouldn't soothe his bristled feathers. But it did make him think about his own family again. Taking the first opportunity, he called Johnny and Rihannon's neighbour to keep them from worrying and demanding that they keep their kids in, whatever happened.

And then Gwen came up with the idea of using all the tricks she's learnt from being a police officer, to gather some quick cash and whatever else they might need. The idea was brilliant and with all four adults lending a hand, they could easily do it all while staying under the radars, at least for a couple of days.

The next few days are a hectic storm of car jacking, pick pocketing and all around a lot of business that Ianto thought he'd never have to face when he started working as a "civil servant". Although, he had to admit that, the fake-waiter ruse to pull credit-card scams, was just genius.

They'd even enrolled little Evan's help in one of their scams. Gwen and he would be near a park, standing next to some business man with a laptop, she's do the cross-eyed trick that always made him cry very loudly, distracting the guy while Jack came around the back and snatched his case and ran.

In the end, they rounded up enough money and equipment to get back in the game and start plotting once more, while Ianto made the supply runs with baby Evan, who seemed quite intent on not letting the man leave his sight for some reason.

They'd returned together, with changes of clothes for everyone (Ianto having to actually stop himself from snogging the daylight out of Jack when the man smiled his beautiful smile at him for bringing him another coat) and enough food to last a few days.

The fact that the Torchwood network was still up was a blessing when it came to their information gathering, so was the fact that Lois Habiba, from John Frobisher's office, was willing to deal with them.

Their talk with the woman and the information they could get thanks to it were enough lead to keep them going on, they could only hope that she would make up her mind and put on the camera/contact lenses Gwen gave her and could become their eyes in the Thames House. But even with that, it had been a cold wake-up call though, when they realized that the government was behind the assassination attempts on them. But they still needed to know why. And so they searched some more. They knew Clem just had to have something to do with this whole mess, the fact that he was the only adult that was able to "tap in" to the weird transmission that had every child on the planet being used as transmitters, just couldn't be a coincidence.

That Jack just up and left when they finally found some information on Clem's past, like the orphanage he came from and the other people assassinated during the "Blank Page Operation", really did not help their researches, but just made them more determined to find out more about it all.

Throughout the whole two days that it took to get to that point, when Gwen was able to retrieve Clem from the police station, Evan had been strangely quiet. Oh, he still cried a little from time to time when he felt that noone was paying attention to him, and he still was as demanding as ever during feeding times, but even without him broadcasting his discontent and childish dread, Ianto could feel that the baby was scared about something. But with the emotions running high around "Hub 2" as Rhys had renamed their hangar, it was to be expected that a baby would feel the stress around him and react, especially one from a telepathic race, like Evan. So Ianto thought nothing of it, even if he tried to spare the baby as much of his time as he could, while continuing to work on the matter of Clem's history.

Jack for his part was torn. He'd got it. He knew what this was all about. It was them. They were back and they wanted more. In light of this new information, he had to talk to Frobisher and make him see reason. If the 456 hadn't held their part of the bargain all those years ago, why would they do that now? And how many innocent lives would be sacrificed now? How many children?

So he'd snuck into the man's house and took his phone, grimly intent on both scaring him into listening and making an example. But the man had been stubborn and wouldn't listen to him. And he knew him too well too. He knew that Jack wouldn't do it, wouldn't touch innocent people. He'd changed in 30 years, he had friends to protect, a lover to return to, he wasn't as ruthless as he'd once been. As dead inside. And the official had struck his coup de grace with the announcement that he had Lucy and Stephen. The last remnants of his family, and they were in the hands of the people that the Immortal was trying to stop.

Feeling himself falling in a downward spiral of guilt and self-disgust, Jack tried to call the Doctor. If there was a moment when the man should definitely be coming back, it would be this one. But yet again, the Time Lord's phone kept ringing until it went to voicemail. And the hole in the pit of Jack's stomach just kept getting bigger.

Light-years from there, completely unaware of the predicaments of the Earthlings, the Doctor was running out of patience. Their forcefully shortened trip to the Library had reminded him of a problem that he had to take care of. The problem of his little Amelia Pond.

So, telling himself that he was just making a quick stop before swinging back to Earth and to his son, he'd gone to the 23rd century and that converted Abbey where the acid for the Flesh was produced.

Of course, like with nearly every one of his misadventures, things were not supposed to go this wrong. But now it had gone wrong. Now he had another him and little Amelia was giving him the evil eye and everyone else was working themselves in a right frenzy. It made him thankful that he'd left his son away from this mayhem, safe with Jack. He'd have to call them soon to check on them, which reminded him that he'd forgotten his phone in the T.A.R.D.I.S., again. Hopefully, Jack would only give him an earful and be done with that. It really wasn't his fault. Okay that was a lie, he'd just sort of occulted most things that wasn't dealing with Amelia's situation, from his mind for a moment and that had included the phone Jack had given him. He would feel very bad about this later, for the moment, the best he could do, was refrain the Humans and Flesh from killing each other and hope his little boy wasn't driving his babysitters crazy.

Back on Earth, Ianto was rocking a wailing Evan, standing in retreat and watching warily while Clem and Gwen confronted a very grim and sad looking Jack.

Ianto couldn't help but deny, even to himself, what was happening. Sure, their relationship was young, just shy past the budding part, filled with frenzied sex and quiet after-sex talks. They hadn't done very much else, and Evan's sudden appearance 3 months ago hadn't helped that. And sure, he'd known about his Immortality. He knew that Jack would still be there, long after he was gone. But to realize, with dread for what was to come and horror about what was passed, that his lover had a past so far from the man he'd grown to love. It hurt like hell.

Because it showed him that he might not actually know this man, for all the smiles, for all the tenderness sometimes. And even if he'd always known that Jack had a rough edge to him. He'd never thought much about it. But here was the living proof of this ruthlessness. Clem… just a little boy, running away and scared. Just a little boy led to slaughter by a beautiful man with a dashing grin and billowing greatcoat. A little boy led to slaughter by Jack Harkness.

Eh, slightly shorter than usual. Try to do better next time. *goes back to slumber*