A/N:
Ok, so there's an overlap here between Days 3 and 4 and some of what I have going on here really went on in the episode labelled Day Four…
As always a HUGE thank you for the reviews! Wow, you guys have really been making my day. I'm honestly so very glad you've been enjoying. I hope you continue to as we head towards the end.
Also another great big thank you to Kitsa for walking through scenes and ideas with me ;-)
Chapter Twenty:
Day Three, Part Four
& Day Four Part One
"Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much,
but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are.
Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin."
Tori Amos
Jack finished buttoning his shirt and rejoined the others, alone. Gwen shot him a questioning look, obviously wondering where Ianto was, but he shook his head. His partner—he rubbed his fingers along the ring wondering how much longer he'd really be wearing it—Ianto had told him he needed to get out, clear his head, he'd be back in a couple of hours, three at the most. Even under the circumstances, he couldn't begrudge the younger man that. And it wasn't that he didn't expect him to come back, it was just that he didn't know what would happen when he did, when this was all over. He didn't know if Ianto would ever look at him and not see a monster… but whatever was going to happen, there was nothing he could do about it now except give his Welshman the space he needed and hope he loved him enough to give him a chance to put things right.
He surveyed people gathered around the unofficial 'command centre' of the warehouse. They'd been talking amongst themselves when he came up, but now there was only silence save for the computers.
They were all there, even Tim and Abby's former boss. At some point, he really was going to have to find out how that happened. In the meantime, however, he crossed the distance between himself and the other man. "I didn't get a chance to introduced myself before," he said to him. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness," he extended his hand, not quite sure…
But Gibbs accepted it. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs," he said. He didn't smile. His hand was firm, calloused; his eyes were the eyes of a man who had seen a lot, at least as much as a man of Gibbs' years could.
"What you said before, about terrorists," Jack told him, "you were right. I should have known they'd be back. People like that always are; it doesn't matter what planet they're from or what species they are, if you give into them once, the will always come back, demanding more."
"I guess some things really are universal," Gibbs mused.
"Yeah. And timeless." He turned and faced the rest of the people gathered there. His team. Gwen was reclined in the sofa, looking angry, hurt. Sara, sat next to her with her arms crossed, waiting for him to say something to redeem himself. Tim was still looking like a dog that had been kicked. Martha…she was as mad as Gwen. She had every right to be. They all did, it was all his fault. Abby… Abby was just waiting, her faith in him cracked but not shattered. His little optimist. He smiled; she smiled back.
Jack let his gaze drift past her towards Mickey… Bobby… it was hard to tell what either of them were thinking. Wendy looked like she'd been betrayed. She had been. She had been an orphan too once. It could have been here… if the 456 had come twenty years ago instead of forty, it could have been her.
Rhys and Nerys were looking at him too, waiting. They weren't part of his team, but they were watching him just like the others, wanting him to say something, anything that they could use grab onto that might make them willing to believe in him again.
Even Clem MacDonald, once just a face on a bus, now a name, a real person, looked like he might be willing to latch onto something, if someone offered him anything worth believing in.
"I'm sorry," Jack told them all. "I should have trusted you. I should have told you. I was afraid of… of telling you the truth, of admitting my role in what happened forty years ago. I thought I could fix it myself. I thought if I spoke to Frobisher…" he sighed. He'd expected Frobisher to cave, to give in, to realize he was in over his head. "I was wrong. He doesn't want our help and he's taken the steps necessary to keep me out of it."
"What kind of 'steps'?" Bobby wanted to know.
"It doesn't matter..."
"Jack," Gwen stretched his name out into two syllables.
"It doesn't matter," he repeated. "I'm not staying out of it. We're not staying out of it. Bobby, you were right," he said, catching and holding the blond's gaze a moment. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets to keep himself from playing with his wedding band—or at least to keep the others from noticing that he was. "I can't undo the past or change the things I've done. I can't go back. Believe me, I would if I could," he looked to Clem. "There are so many things I would do differently if I had the chance to do them over again."
"If it wasn't you, it woulda been somebody else," Rhys surprised him by saying. "They would've found someone else to do their dirty work for 'em. You know it," he said to the sharp glower Gwen sent in his direction. "At least this way we know what we're up against, yeah?"
There was a long moment of silence. Finally Gwen nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, ok."
Sounds coming from the computer drew their attention…there was movement… it looked as if Frobisher and the others were being called back into the room with 456.
"Mickey, are you still recording all this?" Gwen asked him.
He rolled his chair over to his computer. "Yeah, we're still recording. Why?"
"We need every second of this," she slid in next to him to watch the proceedings.
"What for?" asked Tim.
"My guess," Gibbs told him, "Is that this stuff is going to make great leverage," he shot a look over towards Jack; it wasn't quite a smile, but it was close enough. He nodded in return.
"Tim, you can read short hand, yeah?" Gwen asked.
"Yeah, yeah, sure," he joined them at the screen. "Are they going back in?"
"Looks like," said Mickey.
"You read short hand McGee?" asked Gibbs.
"Timmy has all kinds of talents," Abby grinned.
Jack's eyebrows shot up; Gibbs scowled. Tim blushed.
"What, I'm just saying…."
……………………………………………………..
"Ianto," Sarah Jane Smith opened her back door and ushered him into the house. "What are you doing here?"
"Everything's all right," he was quick to assure her, not wanting to panic her any more than his unexpected appearance at her door must have already done.
"It hardly looks it," she replied as she looked him over. He'd been crying recently. "What happened?"
He hesitated… he was about to start attempting to explain when Jason came into the kitchen. Less than a heartbeat later, he had his arms flung around the Welshman's waist and was holding on tight.
Then… "Papa…?" he looked around. Fear seemed to overwhelm the child.
"He's fine," Ianto told him. "He couldn't come with me but he's fine, I promise," Ianto told him, desperately hanging onto his own composure. Ella was just behind Jason.
He knelt down to the boy's level. "Your Papa said to give you this," he placed a soft kiss to his forehead. "And to tell you that he'll see you just as soon as he can. To tell you how much he loves you and misses you." Jack had told him no such thing, but it couldn't hurt to lie. It was what Jack would have said, if he'd told him where he was going. God, how can I know him so well, but still not know if I know him at all? He wondered.
"How come he didn't come?" Jason wanted to know.
"He couldn't get away, but everything's fine, I promise," he repeated, wondering just which one of them he was really trying to convince. He glanced up at Jack's mother; she looked worried. "Jack is fine," he told her in the most credible tone he could muster. He might have been willing to tell Sarah Jane why he'd left, but he wasn't going to tell Ella. He suspected that she might not be as willing to forgive her son as Sarah Jane would probably be—or at the very least it would hurt Jack more to have his mother's animosity right now. He also suspected that Ella didn't believe him about everything being fine.
"Jason, it's well past bedtime," she held her hand out to her grandson. "Go back on upstairs…"
"But…"
"Go on," Ianto told him. "I'll be up to tuck you in, in a bit if you like."
"Will you read to me?"
"Jason…" Ella began to protest, but the Welshman shook his head.
"Of course I will," he said. "Pick something out and I'll be up in a few minutes," he captured the boy in another warm hug, bringing him in tight. Clem and his friends had been just about Jason's age when… "I love you," he whispered, choking back another sob. Nobody would miss them, that's what Jack had said. Nobody would miss Clement MacDonald or those other children. Nobody would ever know they were gone.
But that was a lie. Even if they didn't have mothers and fathers, families, who would go looking for them, they were somebody's future husbands. Future wives. Future mothers and fathers… future grandparents. All of that had been lost because…because Jack… following bloody orders. When in his life had Jack ever followed bloody orders!
He pressed a quick kiss to Jason's temple and let him go. Ella was watching him. She scooted the boy up the stair and asked him point blank what had happened, why he had turned up like he had without any word of warning, looking as if he'd been dragged through the ringer.
"It's… there are things going on down at Whitehall," he admitted, reluctantly. Somehow in the last two days he'd forgotten how observant, how tenacious, Ella could be.
"Do you know what's happening with the children?" she pressed him.
"I… yes," he said, looking from his mother in law to Sarah Jane and back again. He couldn't lie to them. He couldn't just pretend not to know what was being demanded of them. "The aliens say they want ten percent of the Earth's children." Even saying it aloud didn't make it easier to believe.
Both women looked as shocked and stricken—as sick at the thought of it—as he felt. "No one will ever agree to that," said Sarah Jane. "The British government…the world… they won't even consider it! UNIT…"
"I don't know where UNIT is in all this," he told her honestly, his tone betraying his lack of faith in the world's governments to stand up and do what any ordinary citizen should believe was right, to fight, to not give in. "We've only seen a representative from the Home Office, a man called John Frobisher," he told her because if anything happened to him, to the rest of them, someone else had to know. Someone besides Torchwood had to know what had happened over the course of the last seventy two hours. "He's been chosen to be some sort of…of middle man, between the governments of the world and the aliens, the 456."
"I don't understand. Where's the Prime Minister, the United Nations?"
He shrugged, "I don't know, Sarah Jane. I don't know what's happening out there."
"But they're not seriously considering…? Ianto…"
"They hadn't come to a conclusion when I left," he told her, "but I think they're going to do it." Just like they did forty years ago… only this time there was no Spanish flu, no pandemic. This time there were only threats. Terrorists, just like Gibbs said. "I believe they're going to give them what they want. They're going give them the children they've asked for.."
"What about Jack?" Ella asked him. "Isn't this what you people do?"
"He…they're monitoring the situation, discussing options. That's all I know," he insisted when she gave him a questioning glare.
Reluctantly, Ella nodded accepting that it really was all he could say, thanked him and excused herself.
The young Welshman swallowed and leant against the kitchen counter feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He was sure he was going to be sick. They were really going to do it, they were going to hand over the kids, just like they did before…
Sarah Jane pressed a cool glass of water into his hands. All the colour had drained from his face; she doubted she was fairing much better. "There's something more you're not saying, isn't there?" she prompted after a moment of silence had passed between them.
He looked at her. There was no denying it. "Yeah. But it's not important," he lied. He couldn't tell her about Jack's part it in. He'd thought he could, but it was bad enough…bad enough I hate him right now, he doesn't need anyone else's animosity… "I just… I needed to see Seren and Jason, that's all."
"Why didn't Jack come with you?"
"How could he? Dashing hero, fearless leader…all that rubbish." He drained the last of the water and set the glass on the counter behind him.
"Ianto, whatever it is…"
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
She gave him a last, long, appraising look, but then let it go. "Harry should be here in by morning and I can tell you he won't stand for any of this. Neither will I. We will stand up to them, Ianto. This 456, we'll show them what the human race is really made of."
He forced a tight lipped smile. "Of course we will," his voice sounded hollow even to him.
"Why don't go tuck Jason in, peek in Seren. We can talk later if you feel like. Go on, up the stair, first door to your right is Jason's room, second one past that is Seren's."
He nodded, straightened himself up. "Thank you. For everything."
"I haven't done much. Not yet, anyway."
………………………………………………………..
In the warehouse, the rest of Torchwood, Jethro Gibbs, Rhys Williams, Nerys Jones, and Clem MacDonald gathered around the computer monitor, watching as Frobisher asked the 456 for a 'point of clarification', asked them what exactly it was they wanted with human children.
The alien screeched and banged into the glass, squirting more green slime over the inside of the tank.
"It knows I'm here," Clem yelped, ducking down further behind the desk. "It knows! Turn it off, please!"
"It can't know you're here, Clem," Wendy assured him. "You're safe, we're miles away, remember?"
Nerys managed to hold down her gorge, even when the thing squealed again, but only because there wasn't anything left to come up anyway.
"But why does it keep doing that?" Mickey wondered aloud. "Is it just angry?"
"I don't think so," Chase leant in closer. "It's almost like…like an involuntary reaction…?" he shot a questioning look towards Martha.
"What, you mean like a tic…or a convulsion or something?" Mickey asked him.
"Yeah, exactly like that," said Martha. "But why is it having convulsions?"
"Well…" Sara's tone was thoughtful as she joined them, "What causes humans to have convulsions?"
"Is that important?" Rhys wanted to know.
"Right now everything's important," Martha told him.
Tim leant in when Lois started writing again. "'Somebody is watching,'" he translated the shorthand.
"See! It knows! It knows!"
"They're talking about the other camera, that's all," Gwen told him. "We need to listen now, all right?"
Frobisher was talking again, telling the 456 that the Prime Minister was watching, that he needed to know why it wanted the children.
"If we could get a sample of that goo…" Abby began.
Tim gave her a look.
"I'm just saying, if I could analyze it…"
"Not gonna happen," Jack cut her off.
"She's right, Jack," said Martha, "if we could get in there somehow…"
"It's out of the question—end of discussion," he added, when it looked like Sara was going to join the argument. "Now quiet down, all of you," he ordered. He stood back, his arms crossed over his chest, watching, as they sent a cameraman into the chamber.
They watched together in escalating, visceral, horror as the creature revealed itself, let them see the child that was attached to it by means unknown… the child blinked.
And then the 456 gave their ultimatum, deliver the ten percent or they would wipe out the entire human race…
Jack found them all looking at him, waiting for him to tell them what to do. Ready to do it, no matter what it was. "There's only one way to deal with terrorists," he said, meeting Tim and Abby's old boss's gaze across the room. "We stand up and we fight." He reached for his coat. "I have to make a call," he told them. "Get organized. I'll be back in an hour—and Gwen, if my little chat with Frobisher doesn't go the way I hope will," if the idiot continued to refuse to see how much he needed them, "we're going to need Lois to do us one more favour. I hope she's up for it, because it's going to be a big one."
………………………………………………………….
Ianto closed the book and tucked the blanket up around the sleeping child. Jason had been out cold since half way through the story, but he'd finished it anyway. He reached over and turned out the light on the bedside table, and slipped out of the room. He'd already been there longer than he'd planned…he just wanted a few minutes with his daughter, then he could go back, figure out what he was going to say to Jack.
Seren was fast asleep when he crept into her room. He eased her up out of the make-shift crib anyway. She fussed, but only for a second, until he began singing to her. According to his mam, it was his favourite lullaby from when he was a babe.
He spoke to her the same his mam had always spoken to him, in Welsh, telling her how much he loved her, how much her Papa loved her, because he knew that's what Jack would have wanted him to do. He gave her a kiss from the older man, then one from himself. He carried her over to the chair in the corner of the room and sat, staring into the darkness while his daughter dozed off in his arms.
He could close his eyes and call to mind the memory of an alien sky, early morning… behind him the balcony door opened…Jack wrapped his arms around him, pulled him tight against his swollen midsection…
"I'm doing this for you, you know."
"What?"
"I just… I know this is weird for you. I don't… I wish I knew what you were thinking when you look at me like that, Yan."
"It's not weird. Well… all right, it is weird," he admitted. He couldn't lie, not when Jack was looking at him like that. "But that doesn't mean it it's not beautiful. It is beautiful, Cariad. You're… you're beautiful." He moved in closer, resting one hand on the little bulge. "In there is something beautiful."
He gazed down at his sleeping daughter. She was so very beautiful.
He remembered the first moment he saw her, the look on Jack's face when he placed her on his chest. It wasn't the way he looked at Seren, his gaze full of awe and wonder… full of love…it was me. He looked at me and I knew how much he loved me. In that moment he felt so connected to Jack, like everything was just exactly the way it was supposed to be. He would give anything to feel that way again.
Day Four, Part One
Ianto didn't remember falling asleep in the chair, but he woke with a start when Sarah Jane slipped quietly into the room.
"Shite," he swore, half under his breath; the sun was already up. His voice disturbed Seren, waking her. Reminding him why he'd come in the first place… "Shhh," he soothed her. "I'm here, beautiful…" she settled, again, but he knew it wouldn't last long. He turned to his host: "Why didn't you wake me?"
"I'm sorry," Sarah Jane apologized as she lifted the baby up from his arms so he could get up. "But you two looked so content together."
"Jack…"
"I called him last and told him know you were here. Safe. Actually, when I told him Harry was on his way, he suggested I find some way to keep you here, so you could bring him up to speed when he arrived. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage that until I found you up here asleep," she cast a slight smile in his direction. Then, "He sounded worried about you, Ianto."
He hauled himself to his feet. "Jack always worries about me."
"I suppose that's because he loves you."
He didn't respond, he just reached for Seren. "Here…I've got her," he took her back. She was in need of a diaper change and starting to give him the look he recognized as the first warning that breakfast had better be on its way shortly or she would let the entire neighbourhood know of her displeasure.
Sarah Jane leant against the doorframe while Ianto took care of his daughter. "I don't think I've ever seen parents more devoted than you and Jack," she said in an idle sort of tone that. All it did was make it clear she was bringing the other man's name into it intentionally.
The Welshman remained mute.
"Ianto…"
He turned to look at her over his shoulder. His expression was difficult to read. "Has…has anyone ever done something you thought might be so unforgivable that…that you weren't sure… you didn't know if you were ever going to be able to look at them and not see what they'd done?"
She mulled the thought over a moment before answering. "Yes, I suppose so."
He finished getting Seren cleaned up and got her some clean clothes to wear out of the bag they'd packed for her. "What did you do?"
She considered another long moment, before finally answering. "I suppose when something like that happens you have a choice, don't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have to decide which is worse, forgiving someone for whatever it is that they did, living with it, no matter how unforgivable it seems—or not forgiving them and giving up your future together."
Ianto looked down at the child in his arms…her face… bright blue eyes looking up at him. Her Papa's eyes. His smile. God, she was going to be a handful someday…
He looked up at Sarah Jane. "He told you, didn't he?"
"All he said was that he'd done something he wasn't proud of, something he hadn't told anybody about, not even you. He didn't say what, and I didn't ask," she clarified. "But he said that he wouldn't blame you if you left him over it, so I can only imagine it must be awfully bad."
"It is."
"Do you still love him?"
"With all my heart," he told her without hesitation.
She smiled. "Well then. It sounds to me like you have your answer."
"But how…?"
"I don't know. But I know you would be miserable without him, Ianto. He'd be miserable without you."
…………………………………………………………
Sara found Jack outside staring out over the city, just…just watching. No one had said anything to him about Ianto not coming back last night.
She cleared her throat; Jack looked up.
"We're almost ready," she told him.
"Good," he said, pulling himself to his feet.
"Jack…for what it's worth, I understand why you did what you did with those kids. I… all of us, we'd like to be able to say that we would never sacrifice a single person, a single child to those things, but… faced with what you were faced with… no one can say what they would or wouldn't have done. No one can fault you for your part in what happened forty years ago."
"All this time, my only consolation was that the deal seemed to work. They gave us the vaccine. They only wanted twelve…it seemed like a bargain." He closed his eyes for a long moment before facing her again. "Come on. Let's go."
"Jack," she caught his arm. "What happened back then, it wasn't your fault. You didn't make the decision to hand over those kids. It wasn't even your decision to make."
"But I should have stopped it." Ianto was right, he'd been a coward, a stronger man, a better person, would have stood up to them. He'd just… seen so much death all ready. If he could prevent… but that wasn't an excuse.
"Rhys is right, Jack. They just would have gotten someone else to do it. If they had, we wouldn't have any idea what we were up against."
He smiled. Somehow that wasn't much consolation. But hearing the words… "Thank you," he said, even though those two words couldn't begin to express how much it meant to him that his team didn't hate him, that they hadn't abandoned him even when maybe they should have. He just wished he knew… "I'll be there in a minute," he told her. " Get everybody ready to go."
Sara nodded and headed back inside. Jack reached into his pocket for his mobile and dialled Sarah Jane's number, regardless of the risk of them being able to track him by his mobile signal. In another thirty minutes, it wouldn't matter if they traced the call or not, and more than anything else in the world—even if he still hated him—he needed to hear Ianto's voice just one more time, in case things went horribly wrong in the next two hours…
