"All right," Owen said once Jack and Ianto were seated. "We need to agree on exactly what we're going to do before we get into the 'how'. Detective Swanson, just to update you, Jack has agreed to us finding the men who attacked him."
Kathy looked thoughtfully at Jack before speaking.
"And what happens when we find them? Because I get the feeling that I won't be arresting them."
"No," Jack confirmed. "It can never go to court. There'd be too many questions asked about me that I can't answer."
"So what's going to happen, then?" she asked, not quite able to keep the contempt out of her voice. "Tell me what substitutes for justice in Torchwood."
All eyes turned automatically to Jack, who leaned forward a little across the table, producing a small bottle of retcon, which he put down firmly on the table in front of him. Across from him, Ianto started in shock, wondering just how long Jack had been carrying that bottle for. He's deliberately gone through all of Jack's pockets the night of Jack's rather spectacular attempt at suicide by weevil, anxious to make sure that Jack didn't follow through on the unsavoury idea of ret-conning himself.
Apparently, he mused grimly, it had been a wasted effort, and his only consolation was that Jack obviously hadn't gone to those extremes so far.
"This is retcon, Kathy," Jack explained. "This is the strongest version we have. Most retcon will only take a few hours from your memory. A few days at the most. This stuff? It'll wipe your memory all the way back to infancy. Needless to say, we use it very, very sparingly."
"And that's what you plan to do to whoever attacked you," she said flatly. Jack sat back, leaving the retcon displayed on the table.
"Yep."
"My god," she muttered harshly. "You people really do have a God complex."
"You asked," Owen retorted. Jack stared at her hard.
"Those men assaulted me and left me for dead. I should have every right to kill each and every one of them, and don't think I wouldn't do it, either. But we're not proposing wholesale slaughter, because that isn't how we operate. Instead, we're going to take their memories, scatter them around the country, and give them new lives where they won't ever be able to hurt anyone again. Personally, I think they're getting a pretty good deal."
Kathy blinked in astonishment, taken aback by the sudden ferocity Jack was displaying.
"Jack..."
"Don't," Jack growled, his voice low and threatening. "If you're just going to lecture me about their rights, then don't bother."
Kathy drew in a long breath, willing herself to stay calm. She had gotten herself into this. It was up to her to try and control the situation as best as she could.
"Jack, I understand that you're angry, and you're hurting. They stole your dignity, your confidence, your security... They stole your life. You want payback. I get that. But this is not the way to do it."
"Well, what's your brilliant suggestion, then?" Owen asked tersely. Kathy looked around at them, uncomfortable with the scrutiny that was suddenly being directed towards her. Jack was looking almost smug as he sat back in his seat, arms folded imposingly across his chest.
"Let me arrest them when we find them," she pleaded. "It probably won't even get as far as court. I can promise you they'll be locked away for a very long time..."
"No, not good enough," Jack said. "This can't be dealt with publicly."
"Why?" she demanded. "Because you can't die?"
Try as she might, she couldn't keep the scepticism out of her voice. Jack glared at her.
"Forget about that for the moment. You don't believe me? Fine. But think about this. What happens if we follow your due process? We find them, you arrest them. I have to identify them in order for the prosecution to proceed. And there's problem number one, right there. Any half-way decent defence lawyer will take one look at me and start shouting for a dismissal of charges on the spot, because you can't explain why I don't have a mark on me."
Kathy felt like she'd just had the wind sucked out of her lungs. He was right. Of course he was right. She couldn't begin to explain any of this, and the truth was, she didn't really care to try. Jack spoke again in a more subdued tone.
"This is why we operate outside all of the usual boundaries, Kathy. Because of what can't be explained."
She felt defeated. Little though she liked it, she knew he was right. A sigh escaped her lips. Her superintendent was going to kill her.
"We have a witness," she said quietly. Startled silence met the admission.
"Who?" Gwen asked, incredulous.
"A young boy. He was at the Bute Park estate when the men arrived with you, Jack. He saw them assault you with a stun gun, and he watched them strip you, take you inside and tie you to the bed."
She watched him carefully as she spoke, noting the way he cringed just slightly.
"We need to talk to him," Jack said, not quite able to make eye contact with Kathy. "As soon as possible,"
"Please tell me you're not planning to talk to him?" she asked anxiously. "No offence, Jack, but you'll scare the hell out of him."
Jack shook his head.
"No, not me. Gwen can talk to him."
Kathy nodded, satisfied with that.
"Okay, then. What now?" she asked, feeling slightly perturbed at how quickly she'd bowed to Torchwood. Owen looked pointedly at Tosh, who grimaced a little. This was where it began to get a little discomforting. What she had to explain was nothing different to any previous Torchwood investigation, but never before had it so directly involved one of their own.
"I studied the CCTV footage from Christmas Eve," she said, "and I was able to track your path from the Hub, Jack. It wasn't easy, mind you. You drove around in circles for nearly an hour before you stopped outside a pub called the Griffin Arms."
Kathy looked away from the may Tosh had produced onscreen to highlight Jack's route, to where Jack sat, looking on expressionlessly.
"Jack?" she asked quietly. "Do you remember that place?"
"Yeah," he admitted hoarsely. "I remember thinking it was as good a place as any to drown my sorrows."
She could hear the self-recrimination in his voice as clearly as if he'd actually said the words out loud.
"Jack," Kathy said, "you couldn't have known what you were walking into."
Gwen was quick to agree.
"She's right, Jack. You're not omniscient, and you had every right to go wherever you wanted for a drink."
Jack swung away from them rather abruptly to study the screen with overly keen interest.
"It doesn't help," he said in a quiet, strained voice.
"All right," Ianto said quickly, sensing that Jack needed the discussion to move forward. "We know where Jack went. We need to identify the ones involved without placing Jack in danger again."
"Without putting anyone in danger," Jack added tensely. Owen nodded.
"No need for Jack to go anywhere near that place. "Gwen and I can go in posing as a couple and stake the place out. We should come under their radar..."
"We'll need to mix it up," Gwen said. "They may not be there the first time we go in, and it's going to look suspicious if we're turning up there every single night."
"You could take it in turns with Tosh and I," Ianto suggested. "Or, alternatively, we could all go as a group. Safety in numbers, right?"
"No!" Jack burst out suddenly with a blatant tone of panic in his voice, and though he was talking to all of them, it quickly became obvious that his focus was primarily on Owen and Ianto. "You can't go in there. None of you can. They'll target you, just like they targeted me. No one is to go into that place, not for any reason!"
"Jack," Gwen said gently, "listen to me, sweetheart. No one's going to be in any danger, I promise you. Especially if we go in pairs, or in a group. It'll be all right..."
Jack, however, was already starting to move towards a panic attack. They could all see it clearly in his face and in his posture. Anxious to avoid the oncoming attack, Owen spoke up quickly and decisively.
"Okay, forget us going in during pub hours. We'll go in there after hours, when there's no one there. We can set up some of our own spy cams around the place, and monitor the feed from here in the Hub. That way, Jack can safely identify the men who attacked him. Once we've gotten that far, then we can decide exactly how to deal with them. Because personally, as nice a thought as it is to retcon them, I'd rather just take the bastards one by one and throw them into the cell with Janet."
"And give her indigestion?" Ianto snorted, quietly cheering at the tiny smile his words elicite from Jack. "No, thankyou. Not when I'm the one who has to clean her cell."
"Sorry, who's Janet?" Kathy asked and Jack grinned at her, though it didn't reach his eyes and ended up looking more like a sneer.
"I'll introduce you later. Right now, let's get the equipment sorted out for this operation."
"Is he okay?"
Kathy barely kept herself from jumping in fright at the sound of Jack's voice in her ear. She turned to look at him and decided after a moment's consideration that, unlike Owen a few days ago, Jack hadn't actually intended to scare her. She suddenly realised he was staring, and that she had yet to respond to his question. It was a moment later that she realised she didn't actually know what he was talking about.
"Sorry, what? Is who okay?"
"The kid," Jack said quietly. "Your witness. Is he okay? After seeing what he saw..."
"Oh. He's okay. Pretty badly shaken up, but I think he's feeling worse that he didn't get help for you when he saw it happen."
Jack was silent for nearly a minute before speaking again.
"Why didn't he?"
Again, Kathy eyed him critically. Jack's tone was calm, almost pleasant. It was deceptive, though. She could clearly sense the anger and hurt that simmered beneath the surface.
"He panicked, Jack," she told him gently. "He's a little boy who got scared and panicked. His parents admitted that he tried to tell them, but they were too angry at him for being out late on Christmas Eve to listen. Don't be angry with him, please."
Jack looked at her, genuinely surprised.
"Angry at...? No, I'm not angry at him. I'm angry because his is another life that's been damaged by those bastards. I know how hard it can be to cope when you see something horrific. I just hope that kid ran away before he saw something that he couldn't live with."
Kathy couldn't hide her astonishment. She had fully expected anger from Jack, but not on behalf of the boy.
"You amaze me, Jack Harkness," she said. "I always took you to be an ego-centric bastard, but even when you have every right to be completely self-oriented, you still manage to find it in yourself to think of others."
"Yeah," Jack said bleakly as he walked away from her. "I do, don't I?"
Tish arrived a short while later, in time to be briefed on what was happening before Gwen, Owen and Kathy Swanson headed out to set up their surveillance equipment inside the pub. Toshiko remained behind to ensure the cameras were all working as they should be, while Ianto gravitated to the coffee machine to make the coffee that he'd earlier promised Jack.
Already feeling exhausted by the morning's proceedings, and thoroughly hating it, Jack retreated to the couch, where he could keep an eye on the happenings within the Hub. After a moment's consideration, Tish joined him on the couch, while at the same time taking care to keep some space between them.
"You're not going to ask me how I am, are you?" he asked softly, a slight edge to his voice. Tish smiled sadly.
"No. I'm not an idiot, and that's an idiot's question. No, there's something else I wanted to ask, Jack. Why don't you want me to call Martha?"
He was silent for so long that she thought he wasn't going to answer her. When he did speak, it was in a near whisper that she had to strain to hear.
"She can contact him, can't she?"
"The Doctor, you mean?" Tish wondered. "Well, yes. She said she left that superphone of hers with him, so that she can call him if she needs to. Why?"
Jack said nothing, looking away from her. Tish was no fool, though, and her jaw dropped as she realised what was going on.
"You don't want her to tell the Doctor," she whispered. "Jack, why on earth not?"
"If she told him, he'd probably come," Jack muttered, and Tish humphed loudly.
"I should hope so!" she retorted. Jack stared down at his hands, acutely aware that he was ringing them incessantly again, and was completely unable to stop.
"If he came, I'd have to ask him... and I'm not sure that I want to know the answer."
"Ask him what?" Tish pressed, although she was starting to feel a cold lump form deep in the pit of her stomach. She could almost feel Jack trembling beside her, even though there was no physical contact between them.
"Why didn't he come to help me? Where was he, when I was in that room... tied to that bed... when they... again and again..."
His voice broke, and a miserable sob escaped him. Tish felt her own eyes filled with tears, and she risked reaching across to cover his hands with her own.
"Oh, Jack... He couldn't have known you were in trouble. I'm sure he would have tried to help if he had known. You mean too much to him for him to ignore you like that."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Jack muttered with fresh bitterness. "You know, I waited for him for nearly a hundred and thirty years? And when I finally found him again, he admitted that he'd deliberately abandoned me, and called me wrong!" He took in the shocked expression on her face, and laughed bitterly. "The Master called me 'freak', and even though he never said it out loud, I know the Doctor agreed with him."
"Jack..." Tish started to argue, but Jack went on like the floodgates had suddenly been opened.
"And now, I'm even more than that. I'm not just wrong anymore. I'm damaged. Damaged goods. That's the right term, isn't it? No wonder the Doctor stayed away." He uttered a choked laugh, tears starting to fill his eyes. "Now I'm wrong in every way. You might as well go ahead and tell Martha, Tish. Let her call the Doctor. He wouldn't want to be anywhere near me, now, and I can't say I blame him, either."
"Jack Harkness, you stop that right now!" Tish burst out.
Across the way, both Tosh and Ianto looked up in astonishment at Tish's outburst. Oblivious to her new audience, Tish went on fiercely, once she was sure she had Jack's attention.
"I know you're hurting badly right now, Jack, and I don't blame you for wanting to lash out, but if you really believe that that's what the Doctor thinks of you, then you don't know him quite as well as you think you do. He loves you, Jack, and it nearly destroyed him, knowing what the Master was doing to you on the Valiant. And I don't know how many times he told me and Mum that we had you to thank for Martha escaping, that you gave up your chance of getting away so that Martha could escape. He was so proud of you for that, Jack. You mean the world to him, and don't you dare think any different."
"Then where was he?" Jack exploded, his voice wrought with grief and anger. "Why didn't he come? Why did he save me for once?"
Tears filled Tish's eyes and rolled down her cheeks in enormous drops.
"I don't know, Jack. I'm sorry, I just don't know."
"No," Jack said in a guttural tone. "I don't either."
Getting up, he strode away, heading for a corridor on the far side of the Hub.
"Tish?"
She looked up to see Ianto approaching.
"I'm sorry," she said miserably. "I keep saying the wrong things. I didn't mean to upset him, but he seemed so sure that the Doctor doesn't care about him. I wanted to make him understand that it's not true!"
"That may be, Tish," Ianto said gently, "but right now it's hard for Jack to accept that anyone really cares about him... even us. It would be doubly hard for him to accept that about someone who isn't even here to tell him otherwise."
"But he said he doesn't want me to tell Martha, because she'd tell the Doctor," Tish said. "You know, I'm not sure what he's really afraid of? That the Doctor will come... or that he won't come."
"Either way, it'd be painful for Jack," Ianto said gently. "I know you mean well, Tish, but perhaps for now you shouldn't call your sister. Just for now."
Tish sighed and nodded, although she didn't appear convinced.
"Are you going after him?" she asked almost timidly.
"Not quite yet," he answered. "I think he needs a little privacy, just for a while. God knows he's had little enough of it since the attack."
"And the men who did it... Are you really going to wipe their memories?"
Ianto raised an eyebrow slightly.
"You have moral issues with that as well?"
"Well, no... Not exactly..."
"It's our way of dealing with this," Ianto told her. "And believe me, it's a far milder option than some of the other possibilities we could have turned to."
"I suppose so," Tish conceded softly. She glanced around sadly. "Jack talked a lot about this place while we were on the Valiant. It isn't quite how I imagined it to be."
Ianto smiled as he turned to walk away.
"Few things are."
Tish watched him go, waiting until he was almost out of sight before standing up.
"I think I'm going to head up and get some fresh air," she said, trying to keep her tone as casual as possible. Tosh nodded distractedly, her focus almost entirely on tuning the monitors that would display the feed from the cameras Gwen, Owen and Kathy were currently hiding in strategic locations around the pub.
Hoping and praying that she was doing the right thing, Tish checked that her mobile phone was in her pocket before heading out of the Hub.
London
Martha couldn't help groaning at the sound of her mobile phone ringing, and she dragged a pillow over her head in protest. Beside her in their large bed, her fiance Tom Milligan grinned down at her in amusement.
"You've got two choices, Martha. You can either answer it now, and tell whoever it is to go away, or you can ignore it..."
"I'll take that one," she said in a muffled voice. Tom chuckled and snatched the pillow from off her head.
"Or, you can ignore it, and whoever it is will just try again later... Probably at a much less opportune time."
To emphasize his point, he leaned down and ghosted a kiss over her bare shoulder. She glared up at him in mock irritation.
"You, Mr Milligan, are a pain in the arse."
"And yet here you are in bed with me."
"We're supposed to be having a day off!" she argued, but Tom silenced her with a tender kiss.
"Answer the damn phone, Martha. And tell whoever it is to bugger off."
Laughing, Martha snatched up the phone and answered the call.
"Whoever this is, it had better be good."
There was a brief pause on the other end of the phone before a familiar voice spoke.
"I'm sorry, Martha... I didn't want to bother you..."
"Oh god, Tish!" Martha burst out. "Sorry, sweetie. I thought it was someone from work."
"Look, if you can't talk, it's okay. I can call back later..."
"No, it's fine," Martha insisted after getting a nod and a smile from Tom. "I can talk. What's happening, Tish?"
"Well, I'm actually in Cardiff right now."
Martha couldn't contain her surprise.
"Cardiff? What on earth are you doing in Cardiff?"
Tish smiled sadly. Martha had to be extremely distracted if he had to ask.
"Just visiting a mutual friend."
And the penny dropped.
"You went to see Jack! Oh my god, how is he? Still flirting with everything that breathes? Tell him I promise I'll come and visit him as soon as I have a chance, and... oh, never mind. Is he there? Can I talk to him?"
"He, um... He's not here with me at the moment, Martha. But I can let him know..."
Martha frowned, hearing the slight hitch in her sister's voice.
"Tish, what is it? What's wrong?"
On the other end of the line, Tish froze. Here was the moment of truth. If she told Martha, she would be going against Jack's wishes... but it was for the best, wasn't it? As soon as the Doctor came, Jack would be able to see how much he meant to the Time Lord, and he might finally be able to start recovering. Wouldn't he...?
"Tish?" Martha pressed, starting to feel the first twinges of fear. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," Tish said suddenly, at the same time wondering what on earth was going on inside her own head. "Nothing's wrong. I just called to say hi. Um... Jack said to say hello, too."
Martha was frowning darkly by now.
"That's it? That's why you called? To say hello?"
"What? I can't call my own sister?"
"Of course you can," Martha assured her. "It just seemed a little... strange, is all. You sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine, really. Um... You haven't heard from the Doctor, have you?"
The alarm bells began ringing in Martha's mind even stronger than before.
"No, I haven't," she said, perhaps a little more sharply than intended. "Why do you want to know?"
"It's not for me," Tish insisted. "I was just thinking... next time you talk to him, maybe you could suggest he stop off in Cardiff... You know, come and visit Jack. I think that might be a really good idea."
"Tish..."
"Sorry, Martha. I've got to go. Bye."
And then the signal was gone. Martha stared at her phone in puzzled silence until Tom nudged her gently.
"Problem?"
"I don't know," Martha admitted softly. "But I've got a horrible feeling all of a sudden."
"Try not to worry," Tom murmured as he began to press kiss after kiss on Martha's warm skin. "If something was really wrong, she would've have said."
Martha sighed.
"I suppose so."
"Mm. I know so."
A smile grew on Martha's face as Tom grew more digilent in his exploration, and before long all thoughts of her sister, Cardiff and Jack Harkness were as far from her mind as they could possibly be.
tbc...