I'm so sorry for the long wait! Go read the interlued "During the Earthquake" if you like. I hope you enjoy this 4th chapter and please, please, please, review! Thank you!
Lover Dearest - Chapter 4 - This Time That We Waste
Jack pushed the Doctor down on the chair across from his desk. "Start talking!" he hissed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
The Time Lord frowned, looking straight into the cold eyes of the Immortal. "It's not like this is your business, Jack."
"It is!" he yelled, closing his hands into tight fists in order to stop himself from hitting the other man. "You came back to take him, didn't you?"
"If you, for one moment, think that anyone can make Ianto Jones do something he doesn't want to, then you don't know him at all." The Doctor looked away from the Captain's face and glanced towards the med bay. "Can't we do this later? I want to be..."
"You're not going near him," Jack cut him off.
"You can't exactly lock me up, Jack."
"Don't try me," the Immortal hissed through clenched teeth. "I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to answer me."
"Why?" The Time Lord got up from the chair and looked sternly at the other man. "You think that when he wakes up and finds out that you've tortured me, he's going to want to stay?"
Jack laughed humorlessly. "What? Now you're going to use him as a guarantee of your welfare?"
The Doctor glared at him and the Captain could see that resolute expression that reminded him of how formidable the Time Lord could be.
"You want to keep me away from him, send me away, kill me or whatever," he waved his hand up in the air dismissively. "And all that without asking him anything. I want him back, Jack, but I'm not going to steal him away from you or Torchwood. I respect him way more than that." He took a couple of deep breaths and then sat back down in the chair. "Let me see the body of the creature that hurt him so I can save him. Then we can talk all you want; in fact, I suspect that Ianto would very much prefer to be the one telling the truth."
Jack wanted to laugh at that. "You think? He's the greatest secret-keeper I know. He lied to me for a year, was ready to have sex with me just to have this job so he could save his half-converted girlfriend. He wished me dead, and is responsible for the death of two innocent people. He's not the little angel you think he is."
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the Captain felt sick at himself. How could he say those things? They were true, but he didn't want to use them against Ianto. Ianto who in the last year had done everything to win back his trust, the team's trust... Except that now it looked as if he had been lying all the time.
"If you didn't come back, if he didn't get himself hurt to save Gwen, he would never have told me about you," he replied after a few moments of silence. His tone held no questions, just the knowledge that Ianto never revealed his true self.
The Doctor - who had looked away at those revelations - glanced up at the Captain at the sad tone in his voice. Maybe Jack did care after all, but the Time Lord was selfish sometimes and, right now, he wanted Ianto back.
"Looks like he's changed more than just his clothes," he quietly said while thinking, A cyberman? Really, Ianto? Haven't I taught you anything?
"This is the Ianto I know," Jack said quietly. The anger that he had felt towards the Doctor only moments before was slowly fading away as it had when he had found out about Lisa. He was hurt and disappointed but even whilst pointing his gun at Ianto, he had known that he'd never pull the trigger. There were exceptions to the rules; he was the exception to death, Ianto to both his and the Doctor's ideals just as Rose had been, and the Doctor was one of a kind.
"I can tell you everything I know, how we got together and why we're not anymore, but I can't do it right now. I have to save him, Jack."
The Captain sighed and then nodded. "Find Owen. He will show you the body of the alien." He turned around then, grabbed his coat from the hanger, shrugged it on. With a final glance at the Doctor he left the Hub.
Gwen looked up worriedly from her seat at her workstation and exchanged a glance with Tosh who shrugged. When the Doctor came out of Jack's office, she rose from her chair and stopped him mid-way to the Med Bay. "What's going on?"
"Ask Jack," the Time Lord replied glancing around. "Where is Dr. Harper?"
"Why did Jack leave?" Gwen asked, ignoring the alien's question.
The Doctor narrowed his eyes and looked at Toshiko. "I need to see Dr. Harper."
"Owen is down in the morgue with the body of the creature that attached Ian to. I imagine that you want to see it and try to save Ianto?"
"Yes. Would you mind taking me down to him?"
The woman shook her head and stood up from her chair. "Follow me," she said, heading towards the staircase that led to the lower levels.
Gwen sighed, watching them go while quickly grabbing her jacket and hurrying out of the Hub, hoping to find Jack.
-Torchwood-
Ianto felt cold and sweaty at the same time and his head hurt like when the Aghartians had chased him and the Doctor while they were on what Ianto had called their 'honeymoon' and the Time Lord had said, 'another stupid thing you silly ape do'.
In his fever induced sleep, the young man smiled, remembering when he had asked the Doctor for a safe place where there would be no running and weapons aimed at their heads. It never worked.
Ianto tried to open his eyes and look where he was, but his eyelids felt heavy and every part of his body hurt; he just hoped that Gwen was alright.
-Torchwood-
Owen was elbow-deep in alien guts. "Bloody hell," he mumbled. Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall behind him, he noticed that he had been searching for something in the creature's corpse for two hours now, and he still had no idea on how to extract an antidote to help the tea-boy.
"You won't find anything in there."
The haughty voice pulled the doctor out of his thoughts. When he looked up towards the stairs, he found Jack's alien friend looking at him. He squirmed a little under the scrutiny of the Time Lord; he was feeling like a moron under that gaze.
"Well," he started when he had ratcheted up his self-esteem enough. "Why don't you find something that works then? Tosh says that you're supposed to know everything."
"I do know everything," the alien put his hands in his trouser pockets. "That particular alien species is highly poisonous, and there's no antidote that you can take from its glands. I needed to see the corpse in order to know what kind of antidote I need to fetch." With no intention to add another word, the Time Lord turned around and started to ascend the stairs once again.
"Wait up, mate!" Owen hurried over to the alien. "I know that you could probably turn me into dust using that shining thing you carry around, but I need to ask if you're sure you know what you're doing."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes and his gaze turned icy. "I don't go around disintegrating people, Dr. Harper, and I don't jump to conclusions without knowing what I'm talking about. I know what that creature is and I know where to find what is going to save Ianto Jones. I'm a Time Lord and we know everything."
The Londoner had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "I get it, you're never wrong. Just..." he trailed off and huffed. "Get back here in time. I don't like losing my patients."
Without further ado the Doctor turned around and left. He crossed the Hub with long strides and by the time he had reached the tourist office he was practically running. He hurried inside the TARDIS and frantically started to push buttons and levers. He had to save Ianto at all costs.
-Torchwood-
For the first time in a long while, Ianto found his mind wandering to the memories of his life with the Doctor that he had tried so long to bury in his subconscious. He felt a warm hand slip in his. He felt like it was wrong to hold that hand while his mind went back to that first day in the TARDIS. He tried to speak but was starting to feel all his strength abandoning him. Nevertheless, he mumbled something that he knew was probably unintelligible and tried to free his hand. He felt the hold around him loosen and sighed contentedly. Ianto squeezed his eyes and suddenly, he was back in that alley in London.
London - 26 November - 1999
He was only sixteen after all so it was no wonder that curiosity got the better of him. Ianto looked up and down the alley and then walked over to the blue box; he studied it for a moment wondering what a police phone box was doing in a dirty alley, in 1999 and above all, what a man dressed as if he were from the 19th century was doing inside it. He tried to open the door but found it locked so, glancing behind him again to make sure that no one was around, he slid his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieved what he'd need in order to pick the lock.
He glanced once more over his shoulder and then put the clip and the little screwdriver into the lock and started to work them. He was surprised when after only a couple of seconds, not only did the lock click, but the wooden door swung open.
"This is strange," he muttered under his breath before taking a step inside the box. The sight that greeted him made him speechless. It was bigger, way bigger than a police phone box should have been.
The interior of the box was bathed in a dark blue light and at the centre of it there was a control panel surrounding a big luminescent transparent column with four metal towers around it bending over toward the centre; the walls were made of what looked like marble and on either side were two statues holding torches
"What the hell?" he asked out loud looking around, taking in the wooden floor, the candles and the big sitting room on his left with the largest library Ianto had ever seen in his life.
The young Welshman descended the three steps before him and walked over to the console. Ianto noticed what seemed to be a wooden calendar with the date November 26. Then he looked up to find what looked like a television where in bright white letters he could read London, Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy.
When his hand touched the console, the blue light in the transparent column shone brightly for a moment but before the boy could place his fingertips against the glass, he heard the door cracking open. For just the briefest of moments he was rooted to the spot, unsure what to do, but then he started running without looking where he was going. He went past the library and down a corridor until he finally found a door rather than just open space and quickly hid there.
The Doctor let himself inside the TARDIS and walked over to the console. "It's been a tiring day," he quietly said. "How come each time I want to have a nice day something happens?"
He shook his head and put his hands on the console sighing a little. "Well, where to now?" Gently, he pulled a lever saying, "You choose this time. I don't want anything dangerous."
Then he turned around walking towards the sitting room and sinking in the armchair taking the book from the table nearby to resume his reading from where he had last stopped.