A/N: Hello everyone! I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas and that everyone has watched the Doctor Who special which was fabulous! I got the Torchwood seres 1-3 box set (my family know me so well) so now I don't have to look up the episodes online which is awesome, I also have a rather sizeable Topshop voucher so will be off spending tomorrow :D Hope you all got what you asked for and had lots of lovely family time playing pictionary and charades and uno and eating chocolate etc... So most importantly: This chapter is dedicated to Sunlime who was the inspiration behind this chapter and who has been a consistently lovely reviewer, I hope it's what you wanted! also, I have just got twitter and tumblr so if you would like to follow me I am Hannah_McAulay on twitter and .com/ on tumblr, I'll follow you back if you drop me a message letting me know that you are from the lvoely world of fan fiction! Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter! Hannah xxx
It's Gwen's wedding in a week. It's late January now and I can't believe that I haven't written in here for nearly a month; I can't remember having left a gap this large for a very long time! It would be nice to be able to say that it's because we've been run off our feet with rift alerts, or because UNIT have asked us to help them with something very important, or because we have saved the human race from alien invasion half a dozen times… but in reality my reasoning has nothing to do with work. I'd love to be able to claim that in actual fact, my lack of writing is because I have been having such a fabulous, romantic whirlwind of a time with Jack, that days have just passed by without me having the opportunity to write, but sadly this would too be a lie. To be perfectly honest, lately I just can't shake certain unsettling and unsettling thoughts from my mind, and up until now have had no desire to commit these thoughts to paper. Because in reality, Jack is the very reason that I have been put off writing.
He's just… I mean, I think, well I don't know… and… Oh for goodness sake I am getting in such a mess about this. I'm sure it's nothing, it's probably nothing – isn't it? It's just he keeps… Oh dear lord….
It started on Boxing Day.
After the absolute nightmare of a Christmas day that we had (Owen bored everyone to tears with his sarcasm and Gwen and Rhys were practically ready to call off the wedding by the time we eventually made it out of there) our planned perfect, intimate Christmas day was now set to take place on Boxing Day. And, sure enough, things started off pretty perfectly indeed.
We didn't do a lot after we eventually got back to my apartment, just had a lazy afternoon lounging on the sofa in our pyjamas, chatting, watching Friends and nibbling on pizza before getting an early night's sleep in anticipation for our early start the next day. Just like last year, Jack woke me up at the break of dawn, clambering on top of me and casually beating me with his pillow, begging to open his present.
Once I had persuaded him to get off me, having to use a kiss on the cheek in order to do so, I leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve his present. I handed him the card first, handing it over with an attempt of a flirtatious eyebrow wiggle, the effect of which was probably halved by the growing blush on my cheeks, and waited eagerly for his reaction. Despite knowing that he'd like it rather a lot, I was highly embarrassed and just slightly worried about whether it may be seen by others… particularly Owen, he would ridicule me to no end…. after all, it's not every day you pose nude…with a cake… in my kitchen… But that reaction was definitely worth it. He pulled it gingerly out of the envelope, and almost sort of choked slightly before laughing manically; I believe my attempt to fix last year's lack of card had been a success.
I passed him the watch next, wrapped up neatly in midnight blue paper with a gold ribbon and watched him tear it to shreds with his childish eagerness to see what it was, and had to bite back a laugh. He took it carefully out of the box and looked at if fondly, a smile gracing his lips.
"It's beautiful, thank you."
"You're welcome" I said shyly.
His expression changed from delight to sheer confusion as he turned it over and began to read my foreign inscription; I couldn't hold back a chuckle then, I knew that my little Welsh code would dumbfound him.
"Gadewch i ni fynd Weevil hela cariad" I said.
"Ok well Weevil means Weevil…Errr Gad...ewch… i ni fynd… Ianto, you know I can't do Welsh!" He exclaimed.
"Ah indeed I do" I grinned.
"So what does it say?"
"Let's go Weevil hunting, love" I replied, hoping he'd understand the hidden message behind Weevil hunting.
He grinned back "It's the nicest present I've ever had"
"I'm glad you like it."
He gave me mine next, no card this year but he said he would treat me to a 'live show' later, and as with last year I was genuinely touched by the thought that he had put into my gift. I opened his parcel to find an antique book of Welsh folk tales (written in Welsh which I felt was highly amusing in the context of our previous conversation) and a red UNIT cap which no doubt he had badgered Martha for again.
I spent the rest of the morning preparing and cooking our Christmas dinner in the kitchen. For about half an hour Jack was in the kitchen with me, following me around as I tried to concentrate and whispering very distracting things in my ears, so I banished him to the living room where he sulked, nursing a cup of my coffee and watching a repeat of the 'Keeping Up Appearances' Christmas special until two o'clock when lunch was served.
Up until then it had been perfect. But just after dessert, Jack's wristwatch began beeping, signalling rift activity I assumed. He looked at it and made a grimace as he saw the screen, then pressed a few buttons to gain the co-ordinates and said:
"Sorry, got to take this" And laughed, not quite a genuine enough laugh for him to seem normal.
"Ok" I said, grabbing his coat and my own.
"No, I've got to take this" He said pulling his coat from my arms and gesturing for me to stay where I was.
I frowned "Jack, I don't mind coming with you. I'd rather do that than sit here by myself, and besides it might even be fun." I offered.
"There's no need for both of us to go" He said, forced smile in place.
"I really don't mind, I –"
He cut me off "Look, Ianto can you just stay here?" He said, sounding strained, voice slightly raised.
"Fine, fine" I said, not knowing what I had done wrong exactly, but feeling like it was certainly something.
When he came back I had hoped that we could just forget about whatever on earth that little episode was, but he came back looking shifty and, quite frankly, like he had been through hell in the hour and a bit that he had been away for. I asked him what it was and he replied, a little too quickly, that it had been a Weevil. I asked him if she had been easy to catch, he rolled his eyes and said fairly. I asked him if he had named her, and he almost shouted back telling me to just drop it. All further conversation was pretty awkward and relatively forced, so I put a James Bond film on. I don't remember which one it was, for once in my life I couldn't even concentrate on Bond, I was too busy trying to work out how our day had gone from absolutely wonderful to positively strange with the introduction of such a routine thing as a rift alert.
Post our little Christmas interlude, things seemed to go back to normal, for a while. Jack didn't make any more mysterious disappearances, neither of us brought up what had happened on Boxing Day and I tried not to think about what could have gone on too much.
At occasional points throughout the month, similar things would happen. He would either declare a rift alarm as false and then sneak off by himself a few moments later with a 'UNIT' excuse or a 'we've ran out of milk' excuse, even when I knew the fridge was full of it. Sometimes I would try asking him about it, but each time it resulted in a similar situation; he would get irritated and ask me to drop it. I tried; I really did, to push everything out of my mind, to stop wondering what any of it could mean, as usually when I thought about it – the thoughts weren't pleasant. It had been a week since his last mysterious adventure, and I was beginning to relax, hoping that this period of nonsensical occurrences was over and done with.
But then this morning, he did it again. The rift alarm went off on Jack's wrist strap (but not on the main monitor as well like it should have done) one afternoon and as per usual we all jumped to action, Tosh trying to isolate co-ordinates, Owen gathering up a few emergency medical supplies, Gwen reloading our guns and I picking up the anti-Weevil spray and Jack's coat… but Jack stopped us. Said that he had been anticipating it and knew that it would be alright for one person to handle. He quickly went over to Tosh's computer and actually closed down her screen, wiping all traces of the location of the activity, and said in a tone – which I assume he hoped conveyed that he was joking, but sounded all too artificial to me – "Don't need to worry about that, I've got them on the wrist strap". And then he left, without another word.
"What was that about teaboy?" Owen asked.
"No idea" I replied, brow furrowing into a frown; I really didn't understand where all this secrecy was coming from.
He returned about two hours later, looking slightly dishevelled, and slightly shift again like last time, smiling all too enthusiastically. He came over to my desk, obviously trying to smooth things over, create the illusion that he was hiding absolutely nothing from me.
"I just had to help send some Gamma girls back to the forest and my god are they a gorgeous race! But not as gorgeous as someone I can think of" He whispered provocatively into my ear. I smiled back and told him playfully that he was being silly, but my heart wasn't in it, I couldn't even blush in response, which I'm sure is what he hoped to gain from the comment, because I could smell it on him. And I was far too busy thinking about that smell. Because that smell meant that Jack was having an affair.
He absolutely reeked of coffee, every single inch of him smelt of it. Smelt of coffee that wasn't mine, and worse still, coffee that smelled better than mine. Why did he smell of coffee that had an aroma more fair than that of my own brew, when he had told me way back when we first met that he had first fallen for me because of said coffee? Clearly he'd found a replacement and was somehow using rift alerts, or maybe even fake rift alerts – who knows, to meet up with this mysterious man/woman/coffee making genius alien.
I had a niggling feeling that I was too quick to trust him after he came back from his gallivanting with the Doctor, that of course the mighty charismatic Jack Harkness would never commit to monogamy with me, but I had always thought that if he had an affair then it would be with Gwen. Despite what he always said about not loving her in that way, I was always a little unsure… and perhaps in a way it might have been easier to understand an affair with Gwen, but with a complete randomer?
Oh gosh, I sound ridiculous don't I? It's only coffee… and some mysterious disappearances… it doesn't mean anything does it? I thought I was over all of this jealous nonsense, he wouldn't really do this to me, not after everything we have shared together across these past 6 months or so, would he? No, no. I'm just being silly I'm sure.
Oh Jesus he's taking his coat off and I swear to god that's lipstick on his shirt collar… Or it could be blood. This has got to stop.
Everyone's left now, and it's just us here in the hub, so I went over to the autopsy bay where he was examining a deceased Weevil victim's body to try and talk to him.
"Would you like a cup of coffee" I asked him, hoping more than I ever had that he would say yes and thus disprove my fears.
"Nah I'm good" He said and kissed me on the cheek, not the lips I add, giving me a nice whiff of coffee again.
"Ok, look Jack what's going on?" I asked, biting my lip, knowing things were probably going to end in an argument and if there's one thing I hate then it's quarrelling with Jack, or any of the others.
"What do you mean?" He asked, sounding innocent enough, but he crossed his arms in front of his body as he said it, his classic signal that he was hiding something.
"Jack" I said, dragging his name out.
"What?" He repeated, slight irritation showing in his voice now.
"Why do you keep going off to those rift alerts by yourself?" I tried.
"Because only one person is really needed to handle them, and I don't like to bother you all" He said, trying an unconvincing smile.
"But why do they only come through to your wrist strap, and how do you always know that only one person is needed each time, and why do you always return looking slightly… well… shifty?" I said, dropping my eyes to the floor.
"Look, Ianto please, just leave it!" He said, his voice somewhere between pleading and anger.
"No Jack, I want to know what's going on!" I shouted now, surprising myself with my reaction.
"Well I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't" He shouted, starting to walk away now.
"Are you seeing someone else?" I called after him desperately, half shouting, half coming across as a whining, possessive child I'm sure. I tried to pretend that it wasn't a tear that was rolling down my cheek.
"What? No! Ianto no! How could you think that? I… oh forget it" He said, shouting the last three words and storming out of the hub all together.
Was he telling the truth? Did I believe his words? I sure wanted to, there wasn't a single part of me that didn't want to believe that, but… And if he isn't having an affair, then what the Dickens is going on?
So, in his absence I did something that I have never done before, something that I will never do again, and something that I am deeply, deeply ashamed of doing. I abused his trust and hacked into his private computer files, well I say hacked it's pretty much an insult to Tosh to call what I did hacking, I simply input the passwords that he had trusted me not to use and viola – I had lost all of my morals.
There wasn't much to see at first, nothing of any particular note at least after all we all shared the same basic file network, the only differences between them being our own project folders and downloads and email accounts etc, but then I noticed a folder labelled rift spike data that none of our user areas held. I opened it, intrigued as to what it could be (after all surely all of us should have all data on the rift?) half expecting the name to be a cover up and for it to unveil naked pictures of Jack's fancy man/woman. But it didn't, it certain was rift data alright.
The file contained all of the information on negative rift spikes, which I had no idea even existed until now, from the 1990s right up until the present; data that Jack was keeping secret from us and I just couldn't figure out why. Looking at the endless graphs displaying a gradual increase in these 'negative' spikes over several years and then a rather rapid increase over the past month or so, I just couldn't work out what why Jack was keeping us from knowing about this.
And then I clicked on one of the spikes, the one for today in fact which seemed to occur around the time that Jack dashed off oh so mysteriously, opening up the attachment which explained all.
27/01/08: 10.23 am
Name: Dianna Briggs
Case Notes: Claimed by the rift near the South end of Bute Park. no witnesses, yet to re-emerge.
My brow knitted together in confusion as I read and re-read the words: claimed by the rift. What on Earth did that mean? So I opened another, back from earlier this month.
09/01/08: 7.37 pm
Name: Ian Stevenson
Case Notes: Disappeared on the pier, two witnesses both retconed. Found 21/01/08, severe memory loss, aged 20 plus years, no signs of permanent damage as yet, possibility for release.
And another.
26/12/07: 4.14 pm
Name: Bryn Arwen
Case Notes: Claimed by the rift in Kings arcade, one witness, retconed. Found 11/01/08, appears to have looked into the heart of a dark star, blindness, inability to speak or communicate.
An there were more and more: Stacey Phillips: now deceased, Marina Jenkins: Paralysed from the waist down and bitten by a werewolf of Nostane, Christopher Wilson: severely scarred, unable to breath oxygen. There were hundreds and hundreds of these cases, and I had no idea what any of it meant, it seemed almost as if the rift was absorbing people and sending them off to unknown worlds, damaging them for life and then spitting them back out on Earth again – changed for ever. But surely Jack would have told us if that was the case, if the rift could really do something like that?
And then in walked the man himself. I swore silently to myself and prayed that he wouldn't come up to his office to find me here, looking through his private documents.
"Ianto?" He called out as I held my breath.
It was futile of course, within seconds I heard him bounding up the stairs.
He burst through the doors to his office. "Oh, hello" He said, a little puzzled clearly not expecting me to be in here.
"Hello" I replied, trying to sound casual.
"What are you doing?" He asked, walking over to stand behind me.
I tried to shut the page down quickly, but I just wasn't quick enough. "I was err… just umm"
"Why are you looking at my private files?" He asked, angrily.
"I umm…"
"You have no right to look at that!"
"I know I…."
"Well? What have you got to say? I trusted you with those passwords, trusted you not to use them like Owen or even Gwen might have done, so why did I come in here to find you hacking into my files?"
"I wanted to know what was going on" I offered quietly. He remained silent, clearly he wanted more of an answer. "Well, if you say you're not having an affair… I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to know why you've been sneaking off, not letting us come on rift alerts with you, so I had a look to see if there was anything on here and then I found this… what does it mean? I don't understand, how can the rift just take people?" I said
"You were never supposed to find out about that" He said, his voice fuelled with a bitter anger, but somehow I sensed that it wasn't directed at me.
"And why not? Surely we should know everything about the rift if we're trying to control it!"
"Because I wanted to save you all from knowing" He proclaimed with exasperation.
"Save us from what?" I asked.
He sighed, "Well, now you know, the easiest thing is probably just to show you" I nodded in reply.
And with that we left for Flat Holm Island, neither of us daring to speak during the car ride there, the silence only being broken when we needed to pay the gentlemen for the ferry across. Jack led me down, underground, to a secret sort of hospital like containment facility for the poor unfortunate souls that had been claimed by the rift. We didn't speak whilst walking around either, but that wasn't for fear of a future argument or awkwardness, it was because the people that lived there knocked all the words out of your very being. Seeing them broken and damaged beyond repair, all signs of their old personalities vanished, their old lives forgotten was so moving and heart breaking and humbling that no words could ever describe it properly. After just twenty minutes I'd had enough, I couldn't face it any longer, couldn't stand to be in amongst such poor, unlucky human beings any longer; not caring about the tears streaming down my cheeks at this point, I begged Jack for us to leave and he obliged, leading me out into the open. We didn't stop walking until we came across the large, expansive field where the SUV was parked.
Once out of there I felt like I wanted to vomit, I was disgusted with myself that I couldn't bear to face up to the realities of the rift we were sitting upon, that I couldn't handle seeing people reduced to…. that. And I felt so very stupid and so very selfish for ever thinking that the reason for Jack's disappearances could have been an affair, or anything that he was hiding from us without a just reason.
"Now do you understand why?" He asked softly, pulling me into a hug in the middle of the open field that we were now stood in. I nodded into his shoulder.
He pulled away and wiped his thumbs under my eyes, clearing them of the last of my tears. "I wanted to protect you, it's not nice seeing what the rift can do to people but I've taken responsibility for it for the last fifteen years or so, founding the facility and finding lovely staff who can take care of the victims here, and most importantly keeping all of you in the dark so you never had to worry."
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I got angry with you and pressured you into telling me, I didn't mean to hurt you or make you cross or…" I trailed off.
"I'm sorry too, sorry that you had to find out. But I was never cross with you, only with the situation as a whole."
I simply nodded again, still a little too shocked to speak properly.
"Ok, well I suppose I was a little cross about one thing" He said, a faint smile gracing his mouth.
"Oh, what was that?" I asked, confused. He was only cross about one thing?
"That you thought I was having an affair! You know I… that we… well you know…" He said, getting a little flustered which is unusual for him. "I'd never cheat on you! I've told you before that you are far too gorgeous and intelligent and wonderful for me to be foolish enough to ruin everything!" he finished.
"Well… I… Every time you reappeared from one of your trips to here or to a negative rift spike, which at the time I thought were all a cover up for you to meet your… whatever, you came back smelling like coffee. Good coffee." I said, glowing bright scarlet in the face, and not quite able to meet his gaze.
He burst out laughing in response, all sense of tension between us now well and truly gone. "Coffee? That's what you based this whole theory on, the fact that I smelt like coffee?" He asked incredulously through his laughter.
"Well it wasn't just that it was coffee… it was that it smelled like very good coffee and I just thought 'hey if he's replaced me in that sense then perhaps this persons replaced me for other thing too' and then I started wondering if it was actually a person at all or some super alien who made an excellent blend…" I said, trailing off again, knowing full well that I sounded insane.
He had only just recovered from his earlier fit of laughter and now began again. "Super coffee aliens? My gosh you are hilarious when you're jealous! And it should smell good, it's yours"
"Mine?"
"Yes, yours. I've taken to bringing some out with me in a travel cup as a little pick me up! I could never drink someone else's coffee, that would be worse than cheating!" He said winking clearly finding the whole situation very funny.
"Oh haha." I replied sarcastically. "And I was not jealous!" I replied, lying through my teeth.
"Of course you were, but don't worry I like it, it does wonderful things for my ego!"