~*~
Part Five
~*~
"His name, according to his file, is William Balder. That, however, is an alias. In actuality, he's a former Torchwood London officer by the name of Sean Bartram, late of the Research and Development department."
There was only one file, and the photocopier wasn't working. The folder had been passed around the assembled UNIT staff while Ianto spoke, and it had reached General Carver. He looked up at Ianto and frowned.
"That information's not in here," he said.
Ianto shrugged lightly. "The London office didn't exactly make its personnel database public knowledge. I remember working with him and, more to the point, I remember that his name was on the list of deceased staff members."
General Carver read down the file. "Malcontent, on UNIT's radar due to a number of websites that were uncomfortably close to the truth about alien life, and some rumours about smuggling alien technology, but nothing was ever proven. Low priority threat." He looked up, eyes narrowed. He was scrutinising Ianto.
Ianto straightened. He realised that Carver seemed to have forgone his previous antipathy towards him as a Torchwood representative who was causing him nothing but trouble, and was inspecting him carefully to see exactly how seriously he should take this information.
"And you're sure," Carver said, setting the file down, "That this is the man responsible."
"No," Ianto said, shaking his head, "But frankly, he's the best candidate I can think of without any deep investigation."
Carver nodded slowly. "Right. That's all well and good, but it's not much help if we don't know where to look for the guy. There's nothing in here about his current whereabouts."
Louise Monroe straightened. "Actually, sir, that might not be as hard as we think." She gestured to the old fashioned paper ordinance survey map that was spread out on the conference room table. The scientists and technicians had spent a great deal of time fussing over it with protractors, rulers and marker pens, and it was a mess of lines and arcs that all converged on a single area, just to the north of where the UNIT base was marked on the map. "We assumed that the high point of readings that Torchwood Cardiff detected before they went silent," she glanced at Ianto, but didn't pause in speaking, "Would represent the centre of the blasts. In other words, the point where the bomb went off."
"And that's where he'll be?" Carver looked between Ianto and Monroe expectantly.
"If he's not there now," Ianto said, "He will be by the time he plants the bomb."
Carver nodded slowly. "Then I think you know what to do, Captain."
Monroe straightened, and snapped off a salute. "Yes, sir," she said crisply. "I'll assemble a team immediately."
Carver stabbed a finger in Ianto's direction. "You're going too."
"Yes, sir," Ianto said. If Carver hadn't told him to go, he would have volunteered anyway. If the Quantum Bomb was, or was going to be, there, then Ianto was quite possibly the only one who knew enough about it to, if not diffuse it, at least handle it safely.
It didn't help that there was some nagging guilt deep down that if Torchwood really did have a hand in the possible destruction of half a continent, then he had a responsibility to do everything he could to help, because he almost hadn't once before.
"Get geared up," Monroe told him, as she left the Command Centre, "We'll leave in an hour."
~*~
Getting to the armoury was a difficulty that Ianto hadn't foreseen. He hadn't stepped foot outside the windowless Command Centre since the explosion-that-wasn't had occurred, and so he was unprepared for the world didn't seem quite right. Part of his brain was telling him that he was looking around a devastated landscape, strewn with debris and small smoky fires, but his eyes were also telling him that the world was just as he'd last seen it, and it was a peaceful and rather sunny morning. The conflict made him dizzy, and a headache sprung into existence behind his eyes.
He closed his eyes, and breathed slowly, trying to combat the rising nausea. He tried to rationalise it. The Command Centre was heavily fortified, so there was a higher probability of it surviving any sort of explosion, which must be why it was easier to see in its undamaged state. Maybe the way the world was wavering indecisively was because of shifting probabilities. The chance of them stopping the bomb changed with each moment.
For a moment, he had a burning desire to sit down with Toshiko and watch her puzzle over the maths of it all, but that was quickly overruled by the immediate need not to vomit. He took another deep breath, and struck out across the base, keeping his eyes fixed on the building he knew was the armoury, refusing to let his brain even for a moment contemplate the possibility that it didn't exist.
At one point he could had sworn he tripped over a half-melted tyre, but a quick glance revealed nothing, and he forced himself to ignore it, and carry on.
He arrived at the armoury sweating and pale, and stumbled through the doors rather than step through them in a dignified manner as befit the representative of a secret and subversive alien hunting organisation.
Jaq Tumenggung looked over at him, turning his attention away from one of the soldiers who was sagging on the floor, head clutched in his hands. "What the hell took you so long?" he demanded.
~*~
Indoors it was easier to deal with the confusion, and after a while Ianto found that he was starting to even get used to the unnatural overlaying of one reality on top of (underneath, around) the other. It was a bit like standing in a crowded room, and picking out one particular voice.
As he donned the black garb and body armour of a UNIT soldier, Monroe stood giving her briefing, having already changed. Like the others, she wore no rank on her clothing, the rationale being that it would be harder to target a leader if you couldn't identify them on sight. She seemed smaller, somehow, out of her green officer's uniform, and the red beret she toyed with in her hands was a splash of unnatural colour that made Ianto, disturbingly, think of blood.
No one had given him a beret, and he was fine with that. It wasn't what he exactly thought of as flattering, or conducive to hiding.
"The target is at these coordinates," she said, rapping the map pinned on the wall behind her with a knuckle, "We don't know how much resistance we may encounter, or what resources they may have at their disposal."
"So we're going in blind?" One of the soldiers looked sceptical, and not entirely pleased. "Oh, this'll end well."
"We're going in carefully," Monroe said, firmly, leaving no room for argument. "Any large numbers of weapons or personnel moving around would have attracted the attention of the security services long before now, but we're not going to assume this'll be easy."
There was a murmur of acknowledgement.
"I know the world is all shades of fucked up right now," Monroe continued, "But this is why the world needs UNIT. It's why our organisation was created, it's why we're the best, and it's why we're the ones who are going to deal with this."
There was a much louder chorus of agreement. Ianto's mouth twitched, but he managed to restrain his smile at the over-earnest nature of Monroe's words. It seemed to appeal to the soldiers, though, and he couldn't help but think that Jack would probably be saying the exact same words in her place.
"Finish getting your gear together," she said, "We hit the road in twenty."
"Yes, sir!" The voice echoed around the room, and Ianto almost echoed it before he caught himself.
Monroe nodded sharply, and left the room, and the assembled soldiers started to talk amongst themselves as they finished lacing boots and zipping up jackets. As Ianto followed them out of the room, he was stopped by Sergeant Tumenggung putting a hand on his arm.
"Here," he said. He brought his other hand from out behind his back. In it he held Ianto's Torchwood issue sidearm and the spare clips he'd left locked up in storage. "Can't hurt to have an advantage, and you're not entirely incompetent with it."
It was as close to a compliment, Ianto know, as he was likely to receive. He took the gun and accoutrements from the Sergeant's grasp. Where once it had felt like an alien thing in his hand, something he only touched when its purpose was done, and it simply needed cleaning and storing, now it felt comfortable and familiar. In fact, after having spent an intense week with firearms of varying sorts, it even felt lightweight, almost flimsy. He slotted the clip into place, and put the gun into the holster at his side.
"Thanks," he said.
Tumenggung snorted. "Just sort this shit out, would you?" he said, "My wife'll kill me if I miss dinner two nights in a row."
~*~
It was amazing the sort of dramatic entrance that could be achieved with a full assault team and several packets of C-4 explosive. Unfortunately, Ianto was rather disappointed to learn, there was no one beyond the now thoroughly demolished doorway to appreciate the spectacle.
The team had driven to the approximate location of what they had determined to be the epicentre, expecting it to require many hours of searching and a good deal of technical wizardry before they found anything close to what they were looking for. It turned out that the region of elevated energy readings was abandoned industrial estate. One large warehouse, surrounded by what might have, at one time, been parking space and porta-cabins that had long since started to moulder and rot away. There was nothing else save electricity pylons and a few roads, for miles, and after much discussions, Monroe had agreed that such a location made sense, if one wanted to be able to construct such an elaborate item as a Quantum Bomb without attracting attention.
They had carefully scoped out the warehouse from a distance, but were unable to find any trace of external cameras, or any security devices that might trip upon their approach and either alert someone or set off a trap. They had approached, carefully, electing to make a surprise entrance, and, if there was heavy resistance, hopefully put them off-guard.
The team moved in, and it wasn't long until loud yells of "Clear!" resounded through the air.
Monroe entered after them, and Ianto followed her. She frowned.
"Is it just me?" she asked, hand resting on her gun holster in an apparently habitual gesture. "Or is this entirely too easy?"
"I generally find that when faced with one's doom, I'd rather have it easy than hard," Ianto commented, earning a twitch of a smile from Monroe.
"So you're easy, I'll bear that in mind," Monroe murmured, flashing a brief grin at him, though it faded quickly as a sharp gesture from one of the rifle-bearing soldiers indicating she should come over to a door that seemed to lead deeper into the warehouse.
Ianto followed, drawing his weapon as he did so.
They went through the doors, down a short corridor which abruptly opened up into wide empty space, the warehouse proper. There were discarded bits of plastic wrapping and straps littering the floor, and some wooden pallets stacked to the side, obviously unmoved since the place had been abandoned.
And right in the centre of the room, on an upside down wooden crate, a small metal cylinder, so innocent and apparently innocuous in its size, sat flashing small coloured LEDs along its sides. There was a high pitched whine, almost too high to be audible, that grew louder as the assault team cautiously approached it. As soon as Ianto was close enough to get a good look at it, he shoved his gun back in its holster, and swore. He strode forward, past the UNIT troops and a rather startled Louise Monroe, heading straight for the device.
"Ianto! Don't!"
Ianto ignored Monroe's shout as he reached centre of the warehouse and snatched the device off the empty crate it was standing on. He turned it upside down to look at the base, and flicked a switch. The lights on the side immediately died, and the high pitched whining sound went away. He swore colourfully, using one or two of Owen's favourite phrases.
"Ianto." Monroe's teeth were set, and she looked set to throttle an explanation out of him.
He strode back towards her and pushed the device into her hands. "It's not the goddamn bomb," he said, and stormed back to the vans, trying to ignore the thick churning sensation in his stomach which was one part nausea and three parts utter terror.
~*~
"If it's not the bomb," General Carver demanded, upon their return to the UNIT base, "Then what the hell is it?"
Neither Ianto nor Monroe had taken the time to change out of their black assault gear, and so they both stood in the command centre like tiny black beetles amongst a sea of olive green. Ianto fought the urge to unconscious mimic Monroe's parade-rest stance as she stood, jaw clenched, in the aftermath of giving her report on the failed assault.
"It's a repeater," Ianto said, and at Carver's look, waved a hand apologetically, "Sorry, a bit of Torchwood slang, in a way. It's an autonomous wide-band dispersal auto-repeating beacon. It puts out false energy trails, which is handy if you're trying to throw someone off the scent of something you'd rather they didn't know about."
"Someone was putting out false energy readings to mask the true origin point of the detonation," Carver said, his face moving from tight to indescribably weary as he realised exactly what this discovery implied. "So, we've no idea where to look for the actual bomb."
"No, sir," Monroe said.
"We have no way of knowing if the bomb even puts out energy of the sort the beacon was giving off," Ianto said, carefully, "It's possible the device was put there just to keep us occupied while Bartram sets up the bomb in privacy."
"Assuming it really is Bartram and that's just not another colossal fuck-up," Carver said.
Ianto shifted uncomfortably. Carver didn't sound angry. He sounded defeated. From Carver's next words, it wasn't hard to understand why.
"The scientists have been crunching numbers," he said, "Based on the quantum wave readings they've been picking up here and there, when the systems deign to work. They say things are approaching 'coherence' whatever that means."
"The decision point," Ianto murmured, "The moment where the bomb goes off, or doesn't, as the case may be."
Carver shook his head. "Things have been getting worse. I don't know about you guys, but folks here have been claiming to see the world as it's destroyed more and more. Twelve more people have vanished without a trace."
Monroe was pale. "Then right now, it's more probable it will go off than not?"
Carver spread his hands helplessly. It was an elegant gesture, if not a particularly reassuring one.
Ianto felt the weight of his mobile in his pocket, pulled it out and held it up. "General, I'd like to try to get in contact with Cardiff again."
Carver waved a hand. "Go," he ordered, brusquely. For all the good it'll do us, went unspoken, but heard by all.
Ianto inclined his head and, clutching the phone tightly in his hand, he left the room, nodding tightly to the UNIT guards who opened the door as he passed through before going back to ignoring him. Evidently they had bigger things to worry about than if he had an escort with him any more. That, or, given the outfit, they'd mistaken Ianto for one of them.
He went searching down the corridor for somewhere with a bit of privacy, and eventually found it in a room labelled 'First Aid' which actually turned out to be the stationary cupboard. There was a first aid kit secured to the wall inside the door, so maybe it was technically accurate. There was only one bare tungsten bulb to light the room, and it threw stark shadows across the room as Ianto leaned against a shelf full of printer paper, and dialled the Hub's number from memory.
After a tense moment, where Ianto was convinced he would chew through his lip before anything happened, and then he heard the line ringing, which was a vast improvement on anything before. He refused to allow himself to hope, and was waiting for the line to go dead when the ringing stopped. He almost hung up, but then he heard one of the most beautiful sounds he could have wished for.
"Ianto?"
"Gwen?!" Ianto knew at that moment that he would never say a single thing bad about Gwen, dubious taste in sexual partners not withstanding. Her voice was like the clarion call of angels, and sweeter than a bell.
"Ianto, th.....od!"
Ianto winced. There was no crackle of static, but Gwen's words were distorting, like a signal dropping out. There were brief pops of silence in her sentences, and he felt like nothing more than a delicately fine thread connected them.
"Gwen, what's going on there?"
"W.......ing o... Something's wrong...........ack."
Ianto clutched the phone tighter in his hand, and thought he heard the casing creak. "What was that? Jack?"
"Infirm...Jack..........fi.....Owe....at's causing it."
"Gwen?" The dropped out was becoming more frequent. "Gwen, what's wrong with Jack?"
There was no answer. The line had died completely, and the phone had decided to shut down for good measure as well. Frustration bubbled over and he found himself pitching the phone across the room. It clattered against the wall and the casing finally conceded defeat. It broke apart, sending the battery in one direction, and the phone in another.
It hadn't helped, and he'd probably just destroyed his phone.
There was a clicking sound, and he turned to see that Louise Monroe had entered the stationary cupboard and shut the door behind her. She was leaning back against the door and staring at him, wide-eyed. He abruptly realised that her witnessing his aggressive solution to a bad connection may not have impressed her.
"Sorry," he said, forcing himself to breathe out against the tension in his shoulders. "I... I just can't get through to the Hub. I'm just frustrated is all. And no, it didn't help. I know it's a terrible thing to say, given all UNIT's trying to do, but I can't help but really want to be back in the Hub with the others."
He sighed, and passed a hand over his face. "Stupid I know. Especially when you think that their opinion of me is generally lower than the opinion most of you guys have. The Sergeant calls me a librarian, but I barely rate 'pond scum' there some days. Well, occasionally I rate 'threat to the security of the world', but I promise, that was a one time thing." He halted himself, realising that it was probably a bad idea to continue down that route. "Forget I said that. It's probably a bad idea for me to say such things in front of a UNIT officer. You might just throw me in prison or something. If there's still a prison left after the really big and nasty bomb that we can't find goes off, which, incidentally, I can't help but feel completely responsible for through association even though that's an unreasonable thing to think and totally illogical."
Monroe was still staring at him. He realised he hadn't babbled this much since his first blind date with Lisa, when she had smiled and laughed as he found himself absolutely tongue tied by her charm and beauty. He'd always been that she was willing to ever speak to him again, having apparently not immediately written him off as a bumbling idiot from the Valleys.
"Sorry," he said, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He wasn't tired. He hadn't been for days in this strange half-existence they were all living in, but his thoughts were sluggish, like he needed to sleep. "Sorry, were you after something?"
Monroe blinked at him, and pushed away from the door. She covered the ground between them in three quick strides, grabbed the front of his jacket and, dragging him down to her level, pressed her lips against his in a bruising kiss that left him stunned and unable to move for half a second, before his arms came up around her, a hand at her back pulling her closer, the fingers of the other tangling in her hair. It was intense, and dizzying, and they had to break apart after a moment to breathe.
"Captain, I-"
Ianto licked his lips, still feeling the phantom sensation of her mouth against his. This was all shades of wrong, wrong, wrong. He was a visitor, a guest, and he had no idea what Jack would say if he managed to get himself in trouble by having sex with a member of UNIT in a stationary cupboard. Actually that was a lie; he knew exactly what Jack would say. Jack would congratulate him, and then make a comment about being so proud, and Ianto fiercely put any thought of Jack Harkness out of his brain.
Because, really, it had been a very long time since he'd had any sort of companionship that wasn't Jack, and those incidents hadn't exactly been among the prouder moments of Ianto's life. It had been a means to an end, and what had made it worse was that there was a little part of Ianto that wanted to believe the lie, that it was something other than meaningless physical contact. But if he'd ever wanted a confirmation of exactly where Ianto stood, it had been demonstrated in Jack's open affection towards Gwen, and his utter willingness to shoot Ianto not long after Ianto revealed the depth of his betrayal.
Monroe was leaning back, staring at him, her eyes wide and shining. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips were darkened and wet, she licked her lips as if reading his mind, drawing his eye. She was warm, soft, pressed against him and without a trace of metal or scars that had haunted his dreams whenever he had tried to think of Lisa, whenever he'd tried to fantasise on his own. A trace of floral perfume still lingered about her, but after so many hours, it was undercut by a more earthy feminine scent, and Ianto found some critical part of his reasoning centres short-circuiting.
She was here, she was willing, she was Human and genuinely seemed to want him, his attentions, and Ianto, for the first time in a long while, had no ulterior motive with someone other than 'this would be quite nice'.
"What?" she prompted.
"Nothing," he said, "Absolutely nothing, ignore me." He wrapped his arm around her back tighter and pulled her towards him.
She made a pleased sound, muffled by an abrupt kiss, and pressed them both backwards until they came up against the heavily laden metal shelves that dug into his back and rocked with their combined weight but, fortunately, didn't collapse. That would have been embarrassing and hard to explain. The world narrowed down to touch, to taste, fingers fumbling aside clothing and Ianto could feel the blood pounding in his ears.
That didn't, however, prevent him from hearing the very startled sounding yelp as the door opened and someone walked in.
Monroe stiffened, her back to the door. They had been rather intent on kissing when the door had opened, and she had pulled away barely a centimetre. Ianto looked up. A UNIT Private that he'd seen in the Command Centre was standing there, frames by the doorway, unmoving in shock.
Ianto briefly considered the situation. He was in a badly lit stationary cupboard with a UNIT Captain, not so much as a hair's breadth between their bodies. They'd been engaged in a rather messy kiss when they'd frozen, and while she had pulled up his t-shirt with one hand, and was fondling his groin with the other, he'd managed to get the top button of her trousers undone, and his hand disappeared inside the waistband.
In short, there was very little chance of explaining it to be anything other than it looked like.
The Private, whose surname was 'BROOKS' according to her uniform, abruptly went three shades pale and lost the power of speech. "I… I…" She desperately tore her eyes away from the tableau before her. "Paperclips!" she said, too loudly, to explain her presence. She grabbed the first box that came to hand, and Ianto decided it would be a bad idea to mention that it was a box of thumb tacks.
"I'll just…" Brooks waved vaguely to the corridor behind her and started to back out. She half turned away, then winced and said, very quickly, "Er. Captain? The… er… General's looking for you. I can tell him you'll be fifteen minutes."
She glanced at Ianto. "Maybe twenty?"
Unseen by Brooks, Monroe closed her eyes, looking like she was praying for deliverance, and licked her lips. She eased her hands out of Ianto's clothing and turned her head, offering a vague smile. "I'll be right there," she said.
Brooks nodded hurriedly and made a rapid retreat, thumb tacks still in hand.
The door thudded closed, and Monroe looked a little guilty at Ianto and tilted her head towards the door. "I should just-"
"Yeah," Ianto said, quickly, then realised where his hands still were. He awkwardly managed to extricate himself, and they quickly tried to restore some sense of order to their appearances.
Monroe had turned an interesting shade of red. She ran a hand through her hair, getting it into some sort of state of general presentability and cleared her throat, eyes downcast and unable to meet his.
"I'll just-" He gestured vaguely to the room.
"Yeah," Monroe said, and spun on her heel and walked out, hurriedly zipping up her jacket and tucking in her t-shirt as she went.
Left on his own in the suddenly entirely too warm cupboard, Ianto was still breathing hard, and let his head fall back to thud against the shelf behind him. The impact finally unbalanced the whole stack of shelves, rocking them and knocking over a packet of biros somewhere above him, which cascaded down onto his face in a shower of blue plastic.
No way he was going back into the Command Centre just yet. Private Brooks had no doubt spread the news over half the base. Ianto wasn't above admitting the necessity for a tactical withdrawal. And if anyone called it fleeing, he wouldn't have denied it.
~*~
Jaq Tumenggung was sitting in his office in the training facilities, feet up on his desk when Ianto arrived. He took one look at Ianto and fished a cheap plastic cup, with what looked to be a child's cartoon character decorating the side, out of his drawer and set it next to the one already in front on him. It lined up neatly with the bottle of something that looked to be brown and seriously alcoholic.
"You look like you could use this as much as me, for all the good it'll do," he said, taking in Ianto's ruffled state with a quick glance and gesturing that he should take the seat on the other side of the desk.
"Bit early isn't it?" Ianto said as he dropped heavily into the other chair, but he didn't complain as Tumenggung poured a healthy measure out and handed it over.
"Put it this way," the Seargeant said dryly, refilling his own cup, adorned with a representation of what looked to be a Disney character. "That bottle was full this morning and I feel pretty bloody clearheaded."
"You won't feel like that if we survive," Ianto said. He toyed with his cup, rolling it between his hands.
"So it's true?" Tumenggung narrowed his eyes at Ianto. "The rumours about probability and being half dead-half alive all that crap?"
Ianto frowned, realising that, as far as UNIT was concerned, the Sergeant probably didn't have enough rank to be told such things. Then he realised that he wasn't a member of UNIT and he had no reason to keep to such silly regulations. "Yep," he said, "All true. Big bomb. Might explode, might not. Given our current state of not having a clue what's going on, I'm leaning towards the idea that it probably will explode and kill us all in a quite horrible fashion."
"Well, in that case, I'll definitely not have to worry about a hangover," Tumenggung said. "I never needed to think about bombs that needed a degree in mathematics to turn them on in the regular army."
"What, you don't think you'd be bored in the regular army?" Ianto asked, a small smile flitting across his lips.
"Don't tell me you've never thought about quitting and becoming a dog groomer, or something," Tumenggung said, with a grin.
Ianto shrugged, "Hardly. Torchwood's my life. Has been for years and probably will be till I die. Fortunately, that day may only be… well… hours away." He felt the sting of something in his eyes, and took a sip of his drink to cover it. He felt his eyebrows involuntarily twitch in surprise. It was good quality whiskey, not cheap drek that could be found on the shelves of your average value supermarket.
Like so much else in life, he had Jack to blame for this knowledge, though it was mostly earned from knowing that Jack kept strong alcohol around without caring whether it was any good. Ianto, when he figured out why Jack kept alcohol around when he didn't drink it, was vaguely surprised that Jack didn't just keep rubbing alcohol in his desk and have done with it.
"From that expression," Tumenggung said, "You look to be a man who knows his drinks. You surprise me, my librarian friend."
"Full of surprises, that's me," Ianto said, and surprised himself with how bitter he sounded. He took a larger swallow of the whiskey, felt it burn its way down his throat and warn his stomach, but he didn't feel any other sign that he'd just taken a hefty drink that, by rights, should have gone straight to his head. He didn't feel any warmer, or looser, though, or even a little lightheaded.
Now, he mused, where was the fun in that? His muscles remained stubbornly knotted, as they had been since their disastrous raid on the warehouse, and he rubbed his neck, hoping that would help.
"And where might you have learnt such an appreciation for my fine hair of the dog, hmm?" Tumenggung asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"My boss," Ianto said, after a moment.
"He's a connoisseur?"
Ianto snorted. "Only in the loosest terms. He's an alcoholic."
That seemed to take Sergeant Tumenggung aback. Ianto dimly realised that it probably wasn't the best idea to go telling UNIT officers gossip, not if Torchwood ever wanted to be respected. Maybe the drink was having a more subtle effect on him than he realised.
"I suppose the more accurate statement would be that he used to be," Ianto elaborated, and held out his cup for a top up. Tumenggung obliged silently. "Or that's the impression I get. He stopped drinking a long time before I met him. When he does drink, he never tastes it, just drinks to forget. And then remembers why he stopped drinking in the first place."
Tumenggung looked at him thoughtfully. "You sound like you've had to scrape him up."
"Once or twice," Ianto allowed, sipping the drink contemplatively. "Oddly enough, it was one of the things that convinced him to trust me when I first started working with him. I came from a different branch. We had a different way of doing things, a different outlook on the world. So, I think he was… grateful… that I helped and said nothing."
The best phrase to describe that encounter, so early on in Ianto's tenure at Cardiff, where he found Jack slumped on the Hub's sofa late at night, glass in hand and an empty bottle on the table, mere moments before he'd staggered to his feet and stumbled down into Owen's autopsy bay, voiding his stomach into a convenient metal pan, would be "slippery slope".
Ianto had simply retrieved a glass of water and soaked some paper towels, by the time he'd retrieved the items Jack was back sitting on the sofa, looking miserable, head in his hands. Ianto had had no idea, at the time, what had caused his bout of drinking (although he'd later found out that Jack had been forced into making a decision that had resulted in the loss of three innocent lives, lives that, as it turned out, hadn't need to be sacrificed – Tosh, Owen and Suzie had blamed Jack, and it was clear that Jack blamed himself too), but he only asked, as he gently tugged Jack's hands away from his face and pushed the glass into them,
"Did that help?"
Jack had made a harsh sound, almost laughter, if laughter was spurred on only by self-loathing, and abruptly sat back, staring at the ceiling. "God, no. I keep hoping it does, but it never helps. It causes nothing but trouble. One of these days, that knowledge is going to stick."
Ianto had folded the wet paper towels into a long rectangle, and draped on Jack's forehead, holding it there gently, a hand laid over the top. He knew he should have been taking advantage of Jack's incapacity to go check on Lisa, should encourage it, perhaps, if it meant that it was easier to sneak around behind his back, but something in his chest gave a funny little twist at the sight of Jack so despondent.
"Do me a favour," he'd told him then, "If you're going to try to kill yourself with alcohol poisoning, don't do it on your own so I can't call an ambulance. I'd rather not Suzie was in charge just yet. She doesn't even like coffee."
Jack had started laughing like it was the best joke he'd ever heard, and Ianto had the feeling he wasn't laughing at the weak joke about Suzie's beverage preferences. He had his suspicions but they were far from explaining anything.
He'd not mentioned it to any of the others, nor brought it up to Jack. He'd noticed a tension in Jack's attitude for the next few days, as if he was wondering what Ianto was saying about him, perhaps still expecting that Ianto would suddenly develop what he called the 'typical London attitude', but when it became clear that he had kept his silence, his attitude towards Ianto had started to change…
Ianto shook his head, dispelling the memories. Tumenggung was looking thoughtful and hadn't remarked on his silence.
"My brother," he said, then hesitated, drew a deep breath and took a drink of whiskey and then continued, "My brother has something of an addictive personality. When he was younger it was drugs – so called 'soft drugs', mind, as if that's supposed to make it better – and when he was done with that, he moved to alcohol. Now he has diabetes. Broke our sister's heart, but we eventually had to just wash our hands of him. He didn't want to give it up, didn't want to listen to us, and eventually we decided that he was a grown man, and it wasn't our responsibility to live his life for him."
Ianto sighed, and shook his head. "I don't think Jack's addicted. But I think it's far too easy for him to slip into the habit of drinking to try and forget. But it never works. He gets drunk, but the alcohol doesn't… affect him." He thoughtfully tapped the side of the cut, looking at the wall over Tumenggung's shoulder with a frown. "Never does. Things like that don't."
Sergeant Tumenggung frowned and made a show of thoughtfully stroking his chin. "Jack, eh? Quite fond of him, are you, to be making excuses for him and such?"
Ianto straightened in his chair, and scowled over the table. "Less of that, please, I'll have you know he once tried to shoot me." Apart from the personal reasons, Ianto mused, Jack probably would have had a certain amount of legal backing. Betrayal of Torchwood was still counted as High Treason against the Crown, and though the offence was no longer officially subject to the death penalty, Torchwood always seemed to manage to be an exception to the rules.
"Must be love," Tumenggung said, sounding amused.
Ianto's mouth went dry, but before he could open his mouth and issue a croaky denial, he realised that Tumenggung hadn't meant anything by the off-hand remark, and was more concerned with draining and refilling his cup. He forced himself to relax, and inject a sarcastic quality into his own voice. "Right," he said, trying to ignore the sudden palpitations of anxiety he could feel, "That must be it."
Jaq Tumenggung knew nothing, he told himself. He had no reason to be worried.
"It wouldn't be great if UNIT Command found out about the Captain's fondness…" Ianto raised the cup pointedly.
Tumenggung snorted. "I'm very probably going to be dead shortly. Who's going to know anything?" But the serious, quick glance he shot Ianto told him everything. UNIT wouldn't hear anything from him. Ianto felt a knot of tension leave his stomach.
"Just one more of Torchwood's dirty little secrets," Ianto mused, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. "Staff on the verge of cracking up completely, bombs capable of destroying reality, Cybermen in the stationary cupboard…" Something started to niggle at the back of his brain, and he frowned at a small crack in the ceiling tiles.
"Sounds like fun, my friend," Tumenggung said, "Sure you won't reconsider that dog grooming position?"
Ianto smiled faintly. "Something to think about. Some days I think the world would be better off if Torchwood didn't-"
He brought his head up, realisation striking him suddenly, abruptly, and he realised exactly what that niggling thought had been. Distracted, he dropped the plastic cup, still half-full, on Tumenggung's desk.
"Thanks for the drink, Sergeant," he said, getting to his feet and hurrying out the door.
"Sure, no problem," Jaq Tumenggung said, bemused, and finished Ianto's drink off as well as his own.
~*~
"Canary Wharf," General Carver repeated, turning in his desk chair to look at Ianto. He had gained a look of irritation when Ianto had burst in unannounced, had been deep in conversation with Monroe, who suddenly had trouble looking in Ianto's direction. "How can you be sure he'll be there?"
Ianto ignored her discomfort. Saving the world was a little more important at that moment. "It makes sense."
"Care to share your reasoning?" Monroe asked, glancing vaguely in his direction.
"It's Torchwood," Ianto said. "Bartram isn't just perpetrating a random act of violence for the sake of doing so. This is very personal. He's gone to the effort of building, and probably activating, a bomb which Torchwood designed, knowing exactly what it would do. It's an expensive, and dangerous job, some of the materials would have to be alien, and some of them are almost certainly lethally radioactive in their raw form. He doesn't expect to just set it off and run. He's going to blow himself up in the process. He doesn't think anything to do with Torchwood deserves to survive."
"You're a telepath now?" Monroe's expression was professional, sharp, and scrutinised him with an unnerving level of regard.
Ianto stuck his hands in his pockets. "I know it, because it's exactly what I'd do."
Carver and Monroe exchanged glances. "Mind if you elaborate?" Carver said, turning narrowed eyes on Ianto.
"There were less than thirty survivors of the Battle of Canary Wharf," Ianto said, brushing aside the memories that phrase brought up with the ease of long practice, "And after we'd fought and watched our friends die for our country, we were abandoned. There was no help, no kind words, not even a paramedic unit to help tend to our injuries. We were left to die. We weren't responsible for the decisions of our superiors, but in the eyes of the government, the military, UNIT and the other Torchwood branches, it was like we'd brought it on ourselves."
"But…" Monroe seemed confused, "You work at Torchwood Cardiff…"
Ianto smiled thinly. "Cardiff isn't London, and I have my reasons why I moved to Wales-ward," he said, and took a deep breath. "Frankly, General, we don't exactly have any other leads. I'm pretty certain we'll find him there, and if we don't, it really won't matter in a few hours."
Carver didn't look happy, but gave them the go-ahead anyway.
~*~