Smiths & Joneses

by Soledad

Author's note: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Introduction.

Warning: more whacky medical science and some really disturbing mental pictures ahead.

My take on the Arcateenians is a feeble effort to fill the holes canon left behind, failing to explain how one of them could appear in human form.

Chapter 15

When Ianto woke up the next time, he had a spitting headache and felt extremely nauseous. Opening his eyes seemed a gargantuan effort, and when he finally succeeded, the light stabbed right into his head like a hot needle. He groaned and closed his eyes again.

Be careful, the mental voice from before warned. You are suffering the aftereffects of severe neurosurgery. Just be patient. The pain and nausea will past. All that is needed is time.

"Neuro… surgery?" Ianto tried to understand, but it wasn't easy.

"Nanogenes," Jack's voice answered. "We used up our entire supply to heal you," his face swam into Ianto's field of view. "How are you feeling, Ianto?"

"Like run over by a truck," Ianto croaked. "But it beats being dead. What happened?"

"The alien, the one who was after Jenny, got into your head and made you believe you've killed all those girls," Jack summarized in the simplest possible manner. "The telepathic attack… it caused severe brain damage. Your neural pathways were breaking down. When we finally killed the alien, you fell promptly in coma."

"I was in coma?" Ianto remembered the wonderful state of peace with longing. That was supposed to be a coma? "How did you wake me up?"

He actually wanted to ask why, but that wouldn't have been fair towards Jack.

"We had some help," Jack gestured towards a pale, bluish shimmering figure at his right.

Ianto recognized the species, of course, and tensed up immediately. "That is…"

Jack laid a soothing hand upon his shoulder.

"An Arcateenian, yes. Don't worry; she's a healer. The Butterfly People aren't so different from us, after all. Most of them are quite decent. But they've got their fair share of insane criminals, too. Just like us."

We regret that one of our own hurt your friend so much, the mental voice of the alien echoed in Ianto's head. We came to your help to repay our debt.

"Not that I'm ungrateful, but it's Tosh you should apologise to," Ianto said.

The creature swayed gently in agreement.

We tried. She was not… receptive. But perhaps she will, in time. The one you call Sarah Jane Smith can summon us when she is ready.

Ianto doubted that it would ever happen, but at the moment he had other concerns. His own health, for starters, which still seemed far from fully returned.

"So, does his mean I have dozens of microscopic robots swarming around in my head?"

"Hundreds, most likely," Jack corrected, and Ianto pulled a face.

"That explains the monster headache I'm having, I reckon."

"They're still working on repairing the damage you've suffered," Jack explained. "Growing new neural pathways and integrating them fully in the complexity of the neural network takes time, especially seeing how many are needed in your case. But it will work out in the end, I promise."

"Voice of experience speaking here, Harkness?" Owen asked.

Jack nodded. "I've gone through something similar once. Back when they wiped two years from my memory. I don't know what went wrong – mind-wiping is considered a safe procedure in the fifty-first century – but I took considerable damage."

"And they gave you… nanogenes?" Ianto asked.

Jack nodded again. "Yes. That's why I know it will work out. It will take time, though. Time and a great deal of adjustment. But you're strong. You'll manage."

"I'm fed up with always being the strong one," Ianto muttered crossly. "Just once, I'd like to be the one who gets coddled, you know?"

He sounded so young, so disarmingly honest that Jack couldn't withstand the urge to kiss him within an inch of his life. Not that Ianto would resist.

They both ignored the exaggerated gagging noises coming from Owen's direction.

"So, what's the next step?" Ianto asked, getting over his brief moment of childishness. He was back in his full Torchwood director persona – or ninja butler persona as Jack liked to call it – nausea and headache firmly exiled into a distant corner of his consciousness.

"You'll need rest," Jack replied. "And therapy.

Ianto's face became an emotionless mask; like a shuttered window, actually.

"No way," he said with a finality that would make most people back off.

Unfortunately for him, Jack Harkness was not most people.

"That's not your decision," he said coldly. "You'll need physio, because the slow integration of the new neural pathways will make you clumsy for quite some time. Believe me; stumbling over your own feet is not the fun slapstick comedies would like to make us believe."

"Perhaps not," Ianto allowed grudgingly.

"And you'll need professional help to deal with the false memories the eraser planned in your mind," Jack continued.

"What for?" Ianto shrugged. "I know they're false."

"Yes, but you're likely to have nightmares," Owen pointed out. "Violent ones."

Ianto smiled humourlessly. "Been there, done that, still have the insomnia. Are they gonna be worse than the ones about Canary Wharf? Or the ones about Lisa as homicidal Cyberman? Or the ones about the Breckon Beacons?" he glanced at Jack meaningfully. "Or he ones about you, lying dead in the morgue after Abaddon and Gwen not letting me sit with you?"

"Yes, I believe they will be worse," Jack said quietly. "You really did believe that you were a murderer, Ianto; a serial killer on the hunt for Jenny. And that's what you need help with: the identity crisis."

"Because I might discover that I liked the feeling?" Ianto asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

"No," Jack replied seriously. "Because it might break you."

"I don't break so easily," Ianto said dismissively. "I'd reside in Providence Park already if I did."

"Newsflash, Teaboy: everyone has a breaking point, even you," Owen intervened "You've seen me at my worst, and I reckon that was ugly enough. But I've never been half as self-destructive as you are on a good day. So, come down from your fucking ivory tower and let us help you."

"You're not sending me to Providence Park and that's final," Ianto declared in a cold, menacing voice. "This is not the starship Enterprise where the chief medical officer can outrank the captain, so back off, or so God help me, I'll have you fired and Retconned back to your diapers – both of you!"

Jack and Owen were shocked by Ianto's vicious outbreak. After all, they only tried to help. Apparently, Ianto interpreted it as unwanted interference.

Fortunately for them, the Arcateenian decided to intervene.

Your friends are right, young one, she 'said'. You shall need help. I have healed your mind and the nanogenes have healed your brain physically, but there is a great deal of scarring, and those scars, both the visible and the invisible ones, will need to be tended to for quite some time yet. Unless you wish to suffer a relapse.

"I don't care," Ianto said through gritted teeth. "It's enough that one member of my family ended up in Providence Park, never to leave it again. Besides, there's no power on Earth that could make me stay under the same roof as Gwen-bloody-Cooper. Or outside Earth, for that matter."

"You don't have to stay there," Owen said with forced patience. "According to Doctor Fox you can go there for your therapy sessions twice or thrice a week as an outpatient."

Ianto rolled his eyes, trying to ignore the persistent headache. "With all due respect to the good Doctor Fox, she wasn't such a great help after Canary Wharf, either."

"Yeah, cos you were already hiding your cyber-girlfriend and blocked everyone from helping, so that they wouldn't find you out," Owen returned nastily.

"Which is another trauma you haven't dealt with properly," Jack said hurriedly, before Ianto could have worked himself up to a proper rant. "Please, Ianto, give it a try. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me. You can't go on like this forever; and I don't want to lose you. Not to your own demons."

That took the wind out of Ianto's sails for a moment. Without the brief telepathic connection while in coma he might have doubted the sincerity of Jack's words – but not any longer. He knew now that losing him would hurt Jack deeply, and he didn't want Jack to be hurt. Not if he could help it.

Sooner or later Jack would lose him anyway – and, Torchwood being what it was, sooner seemed more likely – but if he was honest to himself, which he tried to do, he wanted to stay with Jack as long as he could. HE wanted to try out where this… thing between them could go.

"All right," he said. "I'll do it… for you. But I reserve the right to change my mind if I have the feeling that it's not helping. Deal?"

He held out a cold, alarmingly trembling hand. Jack took it, warming it between his larger ones.

"Deal. Now, why aren't we telling the others the good news?"

Tosh had returned to the Hub right after Ianto had woke up. Trevor had wanted to stay and celebrate Ianto's recovery – partial though it might be – and in all honesty, Tosh hadn't wanted to endure the presence of the Arcateenians longer than absolutely necessary. She couldn't help her instinctive repulsion, and the fact that they could read her thoughts without breaking a sweat didn't help with that.

The memories of 'Mary', how easily she used her own weaknesses – her grief over Raji's brutal death, her longing for her little son (well beyond her reach), her loneliness at Torchwood Three, her unrequited feelings to Owen – against her still burned Tosh. She'd been vulnerable, and that… that monster had played her like a well-tuned instrument.

She'd never felt so humiliated, so betrayed in her entire life. Not even in the UNIT prison, where she'd been reduced to a mere number, to a non-person. That had been something she'd deserved; she had committed treason, after all, regardless for what reason. But she hadn't done anything to deserve 'Mary's cruelty. And the thought that she'd slept with… with something that had been practically a dead body possessed by an alien could still make her sick.

She'd researched the Arcateenians in the meantime thoroughly. It hadn't been a difficult task; they were a fairly well-known species and Torchwood had tons of files about them. The most recent ones contained Raji's latest research, and that had nearly broken her heart.

And thus she'd learned that – contrary to common belief – Arcateenians were not shape shifters. They could, however, occupy a human body, entering it in their semi-liquid form through any given body opening and wearing it like armour. The human thus possessed would die, of course, and their internal organs would be replaced by the Arcateenians own body.

As the alien couldn't produce the enzymes and proteins to keep up its human disguise, though, and so it had to kill people and absorb the respective organs again and again. Just as 'Mary' had done for centuries, according to Owen's research. They were a long-living species, which meant lots of dead people.

And now two such aliens were here, on Earth, invited by Torchwood, so that they would help Ianto. A healer and a star poet, apparently – whatever a star poet was supposed to be. Sarah Jane said that her friend was trustworthy, but what if she'd been fooled, like Tosh had?

They'd said 'Mary' had been an insane criminal, but who could be sure that they weren't the same? They were mind-readers, they could have made Sarah Jane believe anything they suggested her. They could make everyone believe.

Jack might have been able to shut them out – he could resist 'Mary's mind-probing, after all – but he was so concerned about Ianto he'd do almost everything to save him. What if they'd made a mistake of judgement? With the knowledge the Arcateenians had no doubt gathered from the others by now, they could probably take over the Hub with minimal effort.

Tosh considered putting the Hub under lockdown as a preventive measure – then she rejected the idea. For the time being anyway.

She literally jumped in her chair when the blaring of the alarm shattered the silence in the Hub. She glanced up in time to see the cog door roll aside. The first thing that caught her eye was a beautifully arranged bouquet of – cherry flowers? Where could one possibly find cherry flowers in Cardiff? It was followed by the familiar bald head of Trevor, half-hidden behind the fragile branches.

Trevor sauntered down the steps, balancing the large bouquet with impressive skill and handed it her with a flourish.

"Here, these are for you?"

"What for?" Tosh couldn't withstand the urge to bury her face in the bouquet. It had been years since she'd last seen cherry flowers, let aside touch them.

"To cheer you up," Trevor replied simply. "You looked like someone in serious need for a little cheering up."

"But cherry flowers!" Tosh still couldn't believe it. "Where did you get cherry flowers? In Cardiff, of all places!"

Trevor laughed. "You know, for a computer genius you have surprisingly little use for the things in your daily life. Such things can be ordered nowadays, you know, and have them flown in directly from Japan."

"They must have cost you a fortune," Tosh said, almost scoldingly. Almost. She was too touched to be really angry. Nobody had ever brought her flowers; especially not to cheer her up.

Trevor shrugged. "And who else do I have to spend my money on?"

"You certainly shouldn't spend it on me," Tosh replied, more sternly now. "We've talked about this…"

"No," Trevor interrupted. "You've talked about this, and you've decided that it was completely inappropriate, because of your former relationship with Dr. Singh. You never asked what I think about it."

Tosh blinked in surprise. "I know what you think."

"No, you don't," Trevor interrupted again. "I respected your decision and shut up, and you thought you'd convinced me."

"I haven't?" Tosh asked in surprise. Trevor shook his head.

"No, you haven't. Dr. Singh's been dead for years, and I knew him well enough to know that he'd want you to go on with your life. To find somebody who'd realize how amazing you are and who'd cherish you as you deserve. Well, unlike that ungrateful twat Owen, I do. I've had… feelings for you ever since we started working together; I ached for you. But I didn't want to press. I wanted to give you all the time you needed; wanted to wait till you'd be ready."

"What made you change your mind?" Tosh wondered.

She had known of Trevor's interest, of course. But she'd hoped it would be just a crush he'd get over eventually.

"The shit that happened to Jonesy," Trevor replied with brutal honesty. "This is Torchwood, Toshiko; I don't have to remind you that we could die a sudden, unexpected and possibly very grisly death any given day. For a while, I managed to ignore it – we always had too much work for idle speculations – but there are always reminders. Anything could happen, to either of us, tonight or in the next morning, and then it would be too late. I don't want to spend the rest of my life pondering over 'what if's. Do you?"

"Not really," Tosh answered after a lengthy pause. "But I'm still not sure this is a good idea."

"So what if it's a wrong one?" Trevor asked with a shrug. "We won't know until we gave it a chance. Let's seize the day and find out, shall we?"

"And if it doesn't work?" Tosh asked. Trevor shrugged again.

"Then it doesn't work; so what? We're both adults, we can admit an honest mistake and get over it."

"It's still inappropriate," Tosh said. "Technically, I'm still your boss."

Trevor laughed. "Oh, c'mon on! If there'd ever been a non-fraternization rule at Torchwood, Jonesy and Captain Irresistible had long since shot it out of the window," he paused, becoming serious again. "Please, Toshiko, do give us a chance."

"A chance," Tosh said after another lengthy pause. "That's all I can promise you."

"That's all I ask," Trevor, practical-minded as he was, found some thick glass jar of unknown purpose to put the flowers in water. "So… dinner tomorrow? My treat."

Tosh shook her head. "Can't do. Still have Jenny with me, remember?"

"She's a big girl; I'm sure she can be left alone for an evening," Trevor said. "Or we can ask Sarah Jane to baby-sit. The two get along fabulously, and Sarah Jane isn't going back to London before the day after tomorrow, as far as I know."

Tosh considered the possibilities for a moment; the fact that they worked on different shifts made logistics a little complicated.

"All right," she then said. "Dinner it is."

Two days later Sarah Jane Smith returned to London – but not alone. She took Jenny with her, to introduce her to Luke and Mr. Smith, her sentient super-computer. Trevor and Andy followed them with Mickey's truck to collect the necessary spare parts for Jenny's little ship from one of the Torchwood One warehouses.

Originally Tosh had been supposed to go with them, but with Ianto still unable to work full time, many of his duties had fallen to her; particularly when it came to security coding and to the updating of the virtual database. Ianto, who'd kept his promise and was currently undergoing physiotherapy, was not happy with the solution, but he couldn't do anything about it – not yet.

He was determined to do something, though, and that soon.

"We can't go on like this much longer," he said on the fourth day of his slow recovery; Trevor still hadn't returned from London, and work was threatening to swallow them. "I can't properly concentrate without coffee, and the bloody doctors won't let me have any. Tosh can't neglect her research forever, just to do most of my work while I'm being mostly useless. We must hire more scientific personnel. It's been on my to-do-list for a while, but as things are now, there's no way to get around it,"

"Yeah, but where can we found somebody with he necessary credentials who'd be willing to work for us?" Jack asked doubtfully. "Everyone good enough to work for Torchwood is likely to work for UNIT already."

"It depends on your definition of good enough," Ianto said mysteriously.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "You've got a candidate?"

"Actually, it was Doctor Fox's suggestion," Ianto admitted. "I'd never thought of her myself. I thought she was too damaged for the job – but then aren't we all?"

"Who is she?" Tosh inquired, deliberately ignoring the hint about all of them being damaged. It was tragically true, after all.

"Jeannie McKay," Ianto replied promptly.

"I thought she was in Providence Park," Tosh said in surprise.

Ianto nodded. "She is. She's got severe psychic problems, but her brain is still as active and as brilliant as ever, and Doctor Fox thinks it would do her a wealth of good to actually occupy it. She need a challenge; something to give her existence meaning," he glanced at Jack briefly. "It worked for me; and believe me, I was pretty damaged myself when I stalked you into giving me a job."

"Yeah, but you were still able to lead a life on your own," Jack pointed out. "She isn't; not if she has to live in a psychiatric institute."

"Not yet anyway," Ianto allowed. "But she won't have to live on her own. Doctor Fox said she'd be kept as a resident of Providence Park; we'd merely have to send someone to fetch her in the morning and bring her back after work."

"But surely she must have therapy sessions," Tosh frowned. "How is she supposed to work here if she has to go back for that in time?"

Ianto shrugged and waited for a moment to bring the spasming of his hand under control.

"The same way I do. Obviously, we can't hire her full-time. Not until she gets better; much better. But even a part-time job would be therapeutic for her… and extremely helpful for us."

"And you'd have the satisfaction of having found a place for another one of your drifting buddies from Torchwood One," Jack said; but, unlike in other times, there was no venom in his voice. He'd gone a long way to understand what he liked to call Ianto's helper syndrome.

"Yes," Ianto tried to stare him down but the involuntary fluttering of the lid of his left eye ruined the effort. "Do you have a problem with that? Cos I really don't care if you do, just so that we understand each other."

A year ago Jack would definitely have had a problem with having another one of Yvonne Hartmann's leftovers working for him. But during that year – even if one didn't count The Year That Never Was – a great many things had changed at Torchwood Cardiff.

For starters, Jeannie McKay, whoever she really was (for Jack had never bothered to find out more than the basic facts about the Torchwood One survivors) wouldn't work for him. She'd work for Ianto. Ianto was the Torchwood director now, and in theory he could hire whomever he wanted, without asking him – or Tosh.

That he asked nonetheless was mere courtesy towards them. Ianto had always had excellent manners.

Besides, Jack would do just about everything to make Ianto happy. This was a fairly recent realization; one that, frankly, scared the shit out of him. He hadn't felt like this for someone since… since he'd landed in nineteenth-century Cardiff, actually.

Well, save for the Doctor, but that was a different kind of devotion. A misplaced one, Ianto would probably say, but in any case utterly different. He'd wanted to meet the Doctor's expectation; desperately and mostly in vain. But he needed Ianto like he needed air to breathe.

Due to his unique situation, he could survive the lack of air. It would kill him, sure, but he'd bounce back, as usual. He'd survive the loss of Ianto the same way; except that part of him would die with Ianto, inevitably. Compared with that tolerating another one from Torchwood London would cost relatively little effort, if that was what Ianto wanted.

"In the end, it's your choice," he said with a falsely indifferent shrug, knowing all too well that Ianto would see through his act. "If you think she's up to the job…"

Ianto gave him a look of fond exasperation. That special look that usually meant yeah, sure, Jack, I love you too. Then he turned to Tosh.

"I'll leave it to you and Trevor to work out her schedule with Doctor Fox," he said.

Tosh nodded, greatly relieved by the perspective of soon having the broken yet absolutely brilliant Dr. McKay as a co-worker and rose to make an appointment.

"Afternoon shift," Dr. Fox said without hesitation on the next day when they sat together to discuss the possibilities. "She needs supervision during the night – because of the nightmares – and therapy sessions in the morning to deal with the aftermath. But in the afternoon she's usually in a fairly good shape, for several hours a day."

"What if she suffers a relapse, though?" Tosh asked in concern.

"I'll give Tom detailed instructions," Dr. Fox promised. "He's used to extreme situations, and with a little practice you'll all learn to watch out for the signs."

"What signs?" Owen asked; as Tom was still working with Lloyd on what little was left of the eraser – the actual creature, not its armour – he'd been chosen to accompany Torchwood Three's leading triumvirate to this meeting.

"Signs for a panic attack," Dr. Fox explained. "Jeannie is prone to those; which is not surprising by someone who's survived Canary Wharf. She also has depressive phases, but we can keep those under control with medication," she rattled down the names of half a dozen drugs that said nothing to Tosh and Jack but Owen nodded in understanding – and so did, to everyone's surprise, Ianto.

You are familiar with psychopharmaceutical agents, Mr Jones?" Dr. Fox asked, her pale eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Ianto nodded again. "My Mam had some of those prescribed," he said in a flat, emotionless voice. "She spent the last four years of her life here, in Providence Park," he shot Dr. Fox a sharp glance. "I thought you'd studied the medical history of my family."

"I intend to," she replied, completely unfazed by his slight hostility. "After you've finished physio. You may still change your mind about therapy, and in that case I don't want to have any knowledge that isn't my business."

Ianto blinked, looking at the doctor with newfound respect. The kind of respect paid her person rather than her profession.

"I think the committee made the right decision offering you the job," was all he said. "This place needs a head psychiatrist like you."

"I don't actually have the job yet," she reminded him, smiling.

Ianto smiled back at her. "Mere formalities. I'm sure Mr Grainger from the City Hall will be happy to support you. I understand that he's a prominent member of the committee."

Dr. Fox gave him an amused look. "Are you telling me that you've got the head of the City Council in your pocket?"

"Nothing so obvious," Ianto returned with his best bland receptionist face. "But I used to go to school with his personal assistant. That's much better.

~TBC~