Same Ianto, Different Jack

Chapter 30: Interlude with Ianto's Jack, part 3

by Gracefultree

A/N: Jack took over the story again. I'm not apologizing.

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Jack walked slowly up the path to the brick house with the stained glass window as part of the front door. He pressed the doorbell. His stomach was in knots, almost as much as when he went to talk to Rhiannon the first time. He sighed, thinking of his almost sister-in-law. He'd been by her house first, since she was closer to the Hub and he'd known the visit would be shorter, whatever ended up happening. She'd fed him tea and sandwiches while she listened to his story, then refused to follow his advice. She had friends and neighbors. She had her husband's family. She wouldn't abandon them. He left the envelope he'd prepared with her anyway, in case she changed her mind, as well as an untraceable prepaid mobile to use in an emergency to reach him. It was all he could do. He thought Ianto would be glad he tried, even if he didn't succeed.

From inside the house he heard a woman's voice, telling someone about where something was. The door opened and he looked into his middle-aged daughter's eyes for the first time in seven months.

"Oh, it's you," she said by way of greeting. "I should've known you'd come round today."

"Good to see you, Alice. How's things?"

"Terrifying," she answered, her voice flat.

From inside the house a blond boy of about ten years old ran up to him, shouting. "Uncle Jack!"

Jack scooped him up into his arms and hugged him. "Steven! Hey, soldier. How you doing?"

"I was talking like an alien! We all were! It was brilliant!" the boy answered enthusiastically.

"You'd better come in," Alice said, holding the door open wider so Jack could carry the squirming child into the house. A few minutes later, Steven was outside playing in the back garden while Jack sat at Alice's kitchen table and accepted the second cup of tea of the day after declining her offer of coffee and ignoring her shocked expression. She knew how much he loved coffee, though she didn't comment that it was the first time in her entire life she'd known him to refuse it. He certainly couldn't tell her that he couldn't stomach coffee ever since Ianto disappeared. They didn't talk about those kinds of things.

"They said on the news that we should send them back to school tomorrow," she began, sitting across from Jack. "Do you think it's safe?"

"No," he said. "That's why I'm here." He closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh. He seemed to come to a decision. He'd already made it, of course, but being in her house, with her, with Steven right outside, drilled home to him how important a decision it was. He pushed forward. "I have paperwork for you, new identities, money. Everything to set you and Steven up in a new place, a safe place." He pulled an envelope from his coat pocket, put it on the table between them. "You need to go into hiding. Deep cover. Even deeper than when your mother left me. And you can't tell me where you're going."

Alice laughed nervously. "And here I thought you'd come to experiment on him, like the bastard Mum always said you were."

"I've changed, Alice. Not as much as you probably want, but I couldn't bear to lose you and Steven. You have to go into hiding. I'll find you once the danger is past."

"This isn't like you," she said softly. "What's going on? And why didn't you want coffee? You've never refused coffee!"

Jack sighed again and pulled out his wallet, producing a small picture of Ianto. "My lover, Ianto Jones. He worked for me, and the Rift took him. It made me realize I can't have you in harm's way when something this big is going on. It's affecting the entire world, and I want the two of you as safe as I can make you." He let her take the picture. "He made great coffee."

"He's handsome," she commented. "He's younger than me."

"Think how much younger than me he is!" Jack said, trying to joke and failing. They sat in awkward silence for a minute.

"I just can't stand it, Dad. I look older than you do and it's never gonna stop. I get older and older and you stay the same. One day, you're gonna be standing at my funeral. Looking just like you did when you were standing at Mum's. No wonder she was so furious. You make us feel old."

"Actually, I found a gray hair," he said, running his fingers through his carefully styled fringe.

"Oh, well, that is the end of the world," she huffed. She stared at the picture of Ianto for a moment before handing it back. "There's more to this than just his disappearance, I think. You love him, don't you?"

"Perceptive as always," he murmured. "I didn't get the chance to tell him before he was taken, but about six months ago, when the Earth moved, I got to talk to him. He's in an alternate universe from ours. He's trying to get back."

They sat in slightly less awkward silence for a few minutes.

"Are you ever going to tell him?" Jack asked, motioning vaguely at Steven, still playing in the garden.

"What? That you're really his grandfather?"

"He's too young to notice right now. That I don't age. But someday he's going to figure it out. Makes me think we should make the most of it now."

"You say this when you're telling us to go into hiding?" Alice asked, irony dripping from her voice. "Your thinking's a little backwards."

Jack sighed and put the picture away. "Maybe you're right. My timing is either spot on or too little, too late, it seems."

"This Ianto, does he know?"

"About you and Steven? Yes. He found out from an alternate version of me, who'd also had you. About me? Also yes. And he knows as much as I know. I told him everything when I got back from seeing the Doctor. At least about that. The last few months before he got taken, he'd hold me, you know, during it, so that I wouldn't come back alone."

"I suppose that's nice," she commented.

"It was."

"How long has he been gone?"

"Over a year and a half."

Alice reached out and covered his hand with hers. "I'm sorry."

Jack snorted through his nose. "Thanks." He ran his fingers through his hair again. "The Doctor thinks Ianto will make his way back to Earth in another eighteen months, give or take. May, 2011."

"That's good, isn't it?"

Jack smiled softly, his eyes far away for a moment. "Yeah. It's really good. You know how I hate waiting for things, so I'm driving my team nuts, but knowing he's coming back has been keeping me going lately."

Alice smiled slightly before changing the topic of conversation. "Why the deep cover, though?"

"My computer tech, Toshiko, intercepted a blank page order to kill me and a few other people. If this goes badly, I've got to be sure you and Steven are safe so I can do what needs to be done. I won't be able to if I'm worrying about you. MI6 could make the connection between us, if they had the motivation. And when I escape the blank page order, they'll have it."

"Shit."

"So you have to leave. Now."

"Now?"

"Tosh has disabled all the CCTVs for five blocks around your house. It's the best we could do. So after I leave, they'll have all those houses to search. If you leave before then, you won't get caught and can't be used against me."

"You think they'd do that? Kidnap people associated with you? Kidnap a child?"

"You're not just a person associated with me, Alice, you're my daughter! I love you, even if you don't believe it. And I know I haven't been around much, but you haven't wanted me around, either. I'm trying to do what I can, here. When politicians get scared, a lot of things happen that you'd think only happens in the movies," he said. "I've known Frobisher for a while, and it's not like him to give the blank page order on his own, which means he's being coerced into it. He's an asshole, and a bureaucrat, and doesn't like Torchwood very much, and likes me even less, but he's basically a decent man. That's why this is so scary, so urgent. When decent men do despicable things, there's never a good reason behind it."

"So we run," Alice said, her tone of voice defeated. She'd made her choice, it seemed, and she agreed with him and his assessment of the situation. "I always knew being your daughter would bring hardship down on me."

"I'm trying to counteract it."

"Well, why don't you go play with him while I get the essentials packed?" she asked, indicating Steven. She picked up the envelope.

"Remember to make it look like you're coming back," Jack said as he stood.

"Don't worry, Dad. I've done this before. Leave your cup in the sink but don't wash it. That'll show that we didn't leave in too much of a hurry that it was on the table, but were expecting to come back to wash it."

"Good girl," Jack said, pulling her into a hug and kissing the top of her head. "I'm so sorry about all this."

"Me, too."

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Jack stood at the top of the med bay, looking at the projection on the far wall. Owen pointed. "You know what that is, don't you?" he asked Gwen. She nodded, not taking her hand off the scanner. She seemed completely at a loss for words. Jack turned to shout over his shoulder.

"Tosh! Gwen's having a baby!" He rushed down to hug her, not waiting for Tosh's acknowledgement.

"Better not be yours, Harkness," Owen joked, patting Gwen on the shoulder.

"It's more likely to be yours," Jack replied, grinning like a lunatic. "I never even snogged her, let alone slept with her."

"Oi, shut it, the both of you," Gwen said, laughing. She turned to Jack. "What about my job? What about —"

"We'll figure it out," he answered. He set his hand down on hers where it rested on the scanner. "You're not the first Torchwood agent to have a child. In fact, I —"

The Hub exploded with noise and light as an alert sounded, sending alarms blaring. The image on the far wall changed to show Jack's body, with a large pulsing red sphere in his abdomen. Mainframe automatically initiated lockdown. On every single monitor in the building an ominous red countdown began from two minutes.

"Torchwood: Lockdown," Mainframe declared in her calm, computer's voice. "Torchwood: Lockdown."

"There's a bomb in your stomach!" Owen exclaimed.

"That's it, everybody out!" Jack shouted. "Owen, take Gwen —"

"I'm not leaving!" Gwen protested.

"I can get it out!" Owen yelled over her, already grabbing a tool from one of his carts.

"No! There's no time!" Jack protested, grabbing Gwen's face in both hands. "You're pregnant. You need to get out of here, and Owen's going with you." He stared into her eyes until she nodded. "Good. We'll meet up at —"

"Torchwood: Lockdown," Mainframe repeated.

"Sixty seconds!" Tosh shouted from her station where she was typing as fast as she could. Gwen grabbed Owen's hand and dragged him out the cog wheel door just as it closed behind them.

"Tosh, you've got to get out!" Jack declared, physically lifting her off the floor to carry her to the invisible lift.

"There'll be nothing left of you!" she shouted, struggling in his grip.

"I can survive anything," he replied, setting her down. He pressed a button on his vortex manipulator and the paving stone began rising. "I'll come back. I always do," Jack promised her. She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Jack glanced over at the countdown. 4… 3… 2… He closed his eyes, praying that he was right and that he'd return. He'd never been blown up before, so he wasn't positive. His last thought as the world went dark was of Ianto.

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"Where's Owen?" Jack asked softly, his voice full of fear, the first words he'd spoken since they freed him from a block of concrete over four hours ago. Gwen settled next to him on the couch that was even worse than the one at the Hub.

"He didn't make it," she said softly. In the corner, Tosh burst into fresh tears, and Rhys moved to comfort her. "He took a bullet in the head to keep me alive. He pushed me out of the way of a sniper."

Jack closed his eyes in pain, his grief so raw and sudden that he didn't realize it was himself making the horrible wailing sound until Gwen slapped him to get him to stop.

Once they calmed down enough to acquire some equipment and set up a makeshift computer station for Tosh, figuring out who the other people being targeted became their focus. They needed to know who they were, because they were connected to whatever was going on, and they needed to know what was going on and what the government was hiding. She pulled up pictures, and while they seemed familiar to Jack, he couldn't place them.

"I never knew their names," he breathed in horror after Tosh de-aged the pictures on a whim. He went on to explain his part in the mission back in 1965 to deliver 12 orphans to a group of aliens in order to get a vaccine to save millions, not bothering to hide his shame at his actions. "She looked me in the eye and said they asked for me because they wanted someone who wouldn't care," he finished. "It wasn't that I didn't care, it was that I could make the decision to let them go to save millions of others."

"But that's not who you are now, Jack," Gwen protested. "You've changed."

"You've changed a lot in the time I've known you," Tosh added. "I don't think you'd make the same decision now."

"No, I wouldn't," Jack said, though he couldn't help thinking about the little girl, Jasmine Pierce. She'd voluntarily gone with the fairies, he reminded himself, and he hadn't given the children in 1965 a choice. Hell, he knew he was still capable of making a decision like that, much as Gwen and the others needed to think he wasn't. "Now I have resources I didn't have back then. I have you." He looked around at each of them, meeting their eyes with renewed determination, his pride in their skills shining in his eyes. "And we're going to find a way to fix this."

"Did Ianto say anything about this in his diary?" Gwen asked. "Like, could he have given us a hint about what to do to fix this? A clue how to solve it, maybe?"

Jack shook his head. "He didn't talk about cases."

"He mentioned that one where New Jack died a bunch of times, didn't he?" Gwen persisted. "That can't have been the only one. He's far too meticulous —"

"How do you know about that?" Jack asked in a deadly soft voice.

"I read his diary. The letters, anyway," Gwen answered. Tosh gasped and Rhys frowned. "What? I needed to know what was going on."

"Are you telling me that you read personal letters addressed to me from my lover, and didn't think anything of it?" Jack demanded, rising to his feet to confront her.

"We needed to know what was going on!" she repeated, crossing her arms over her chest, unconsciously pushing her breasts up and displaying more cleavage than before. "You were a wreck! You were't being the leader. We needed to know how to take care of you!"

Jack had his gun drawn and cocked and pointed at her face in seconds. Gwen's eyes widened in terror. She'd never seen an expression so murderous on his face before. She backed away and held up her hands in surrender as Tosh rushed over to stand near Jack while Rhys moved to pull Gwen farther from Jack.

"Jack, try to calm down," Tosh said soothingly. Jack grimaced, his jaw locked tight and the tendons of his neck standing out as he struggled for control. The hand holding the gun shook slightly, though it remained focused on Gwen. His nostrils flared alarmingly.

"Jack," Gwen started, but he cut her off.

"Tosh, take the clip," Jack snarled through his grinding teeth. "Before I do something I'll regret," he added ominously. His eyelid twitched.

"Why don't I take the whole —"

"Just the clip!" he barked, his arm starting to shake. His grip on the gun tightened. Tosh reached around his hand to release the clip from the gun, thankful it wasn't the Webley where she wouldn't have been able to do it. Spinning on his heel, Jack stalked out of the warehouse, kicking the door open loudly and slamming it shut even louder, if that was possible.

Before anyone else could react, Tosh slapped Gwen in the face. "Can't you seen how tenuous his control is?" she demanded of Gwen. "Can't you see how on edge he is? Why would you say something like that?"

"But you've read it, too," Gwen protested, holding her cheek.

"He gave it to me to read!"

"And Owen," Gwen retorted. "Why was I the only one he didn't give it to?"

"Maybe because you don't understand him half as well as you want to," Tosh declared. "Maybe because we've never tried to get in his pants!"

"How dare —"

"Enough!" Rhys shouted. "Will somebody just tell me what the bloody hell is going on?"

"Jack's lover was taken by the Rift a year and a half ago," Tosh explained. "You know that part. But what you don't know is that Ianto's been in alternate universes, where little things are different from here, like Jack is there, but slightly different, or Ianto died in London and never made it to Cardiff. He sent his diary of his travels to Jack six months ago, and Gwen wants to know if Ianto wrote about this case and what to do about it. He wrote most of the diary in shorthand, leaving only a few letters to Jack in regular writing. Jack's learned shorthand and read the whole thing, of course, but Ianto's a sensitive subject for him, as you can imagine."

"And you read the diary?" Rhys asked Gwen. "You invaded his privacy?"

"Well, of course I did," Gwen said. "He's our leader and I'm second in command and I needed to know everything I could to keep us all safe. It's not like the rest of you never do things like that. You've got Crimmit," she added. "The police database," she explained to Rhys. "You've got access to invade everyone's privacy on so many more levels than just reading a handwritten diary."

"But that's different from personal letters, surely," Rhys said. "And Jack's a decent bloke. There's no call to read his personal stuff if you don't have permission."

"You don't understand, Rhys."

"No, I don't. I'm not sure I want to, if this is Torchwood standard procedures."

"It's not," Tosh quickly interjected. "And Jack's still in so much pain from how he died and came back earlier that he's really struggling. He was blown up, for God's sake! Can't you see that he's not himself?" she asked Gwen.

"Well, now that you mention it, it is strange that he didn't say anything at all the whole ride up here. He didn't have a single story."

"And you go and bring up Ianto when we've just lost Owen," Tosh said. "It's a wonder he didn't kill you right there."

"But he —" Gwen broke off, her eyes going wide. "You've got the clip, but what about the bullet in the chamber?" she demanded, her voice rising in panic. "He's still got one left—"

"I know," Tosh answered softly. Rhys looked from one to the other of them, understanding dawning. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

In the silence after Tosh's statement, the gunshot outside the warehouse seemed abnormally loud. Tosh sighed and picked up the first aid kit they'd acquired when they were getting money and laptops and new clothes. She walked silently from the warehouse, a withering glance back at Gwen her only warning to the woman to stay where she was.

"Did he just —?" Rhys asked softly.

"Yes," Gwen answered, tears streaming down her cheeks. "And it's my fault."

"But he —"

"He'll come back," she reassured him. "He probably did it to keep from hurting me. So it's as if I pulled the trigger. I killed him."

"No, no you didn't," Rhys murmured, going over to Gwen and hugging her tightly. Gwen collapsed into loud sobs.

"I didn't mean it!" she moaned. "I just wanted to see if he knew some way out of all this! I didn't want to hurt him."

"It'll be ok," Rhys said soothingly, stroking her hair. "He's a forgiving guy."

"I never should have done it," Gwen whispered.

"No, but what's done is done, eh? All we can do is move forward."

"I hope he forgives me."

"I do," Jack said from the doorway where he leaned heavily on Tosh. "I forgive you, Gwen, but you're going to have to change your attitude around here or I'm kicking you off the team."

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Later, after Tosh died in his arms in Thames House getting the data they needed to stop the aliens without needing to sacrifice a child, like that monster Dekker wanted them to do, Jack would look back on the whole week and wince in pain. He would feel the guilt take over, pulling him into a dark depression like he'd never known before. He lost both Owen and Tosh that week, and he wasn't sure how he'd recover. He doubted he'd be able to, until he had the solace of Ianto's arms around him and Ianto's soft words washing over his sobs, telling him that it would be ok. Even when they both knew it wouldn't ever be the same.

He wandered the Earth alone for several months, trying to find peace, trying to find a way to stay planetside long enough for Ianto to return. With over a year still left to wait, he knew he couldn't manage it. And he also knew that he couldn't use his vortex manipulator to jump right to the day when he'd finally be reunited with his lover. He didn't have it, after all, since it was lost and buried in the ruins of the Hub. And even if he did have it, the Doctor warned him not to try that.

The Doctor was very clear that Jack would have to live three years without Ianto, and feel it in his bones and cells and psyche, if he was going to get the man back. Both Doctors had agreed on that point. Somehow, trying to make it happen sooner would break the tenuous link the two Doctors had between them that they were using to get Ianto home. Jack didn't understand it, but he trusted the Doctor. He trusted him a lot more after he made it possible for Jack to speak to Ianto, and his trust was restored completely when the Doctor didn't take his vortex manipulator's time travel and teleport functions away as he had after The Year That Never Was, but, rather, fixed it completely. It was better than it had ever been with the Time Agency, as the Doctor added new functions that he thought would be useful. He'd also added redundant safety features and some smart technology that could repair itself if those particular circuits ever broke or burned out again.

Jack made the choice to leave the Doctor, then, though the Doctor welcomed him home to the TARDIS, and any discomfort being in Jack's presence on the Doctor's part seemed to have worked itself out since they'd seen each other last. He looked Jack directly in the eyes and apologized for his behavior and hurtful words, before going into a rambling speech that ended up with him telling Jack that since Jack was now much bigger on the inside than he'd ever been before, he deserved the perks of time travel again. He no longer thought Jack would need to apologize whenever he went anywhere, seeing Jack's significantly toned-down flirting. Jack appreciated the offer of traveling together, and thanked the Doctor profusely for the improved vortex manipulator, but he couldn't take the offer of travel. He wouldn't take it, not until he had Ianto back and could bring him along. The Doctor shrugged in response, giving Jack an actual goodbye hug, and reminding him about the present the TARDIS left him.

Now, standing on top of a hill in the middle of a cold night in Cardiff, Jack knew his life would be long and lonely for the next year. He didn't mind. Loneliness suited him when he felt as depressed and burdened by guilt as he did after losing Tosh and Owen. After he said goodbye to his daughter and grandson for what could very well be the last time… And he still couldn't get the image of his former partner (in every sense of the word, and then some) pumping a bullet into his little brother's head…even though it was to save Tosh.

He shivered, wrapping his coat around him and buttoning it closed, tying the belt. In the distance he heard the sound of a car engine turning off, then voices. He watched with dull eyes as Gwen and Rhys made their way up the hill towards him.

"Couldn't have just chosen a pub, could you?" Gwen asked, huffing and out of breath slightly, putting a hand on her pregnant belly.

"It's bloody freezing. My feet," Rhys declared.

Jack smiled slightly, trying for one of his usual joking tones. "Oh, I missed that, the Welsh complaining. You look good," he added to Gwen.

"I look huge," Gwen answered.

"She's bloody gorgeous," Rhys responded immediately, defending her from herself.

"You ok?" Gwen asked, stepping forward and closer to Jack.

"Yeah," he responded, though he could tell that neither of them believed him. Which made sense, given that he didn't believe himself, either.

"Did it work?"

"Traveled all sorts of places," Jack declared. "But this planet is too small. The whole world is like a graveyard."

"Come back with us," she offered, ignoring Rhys' squeal of protest. "We can wait for Ianto together. We can rebuild Torchwood."

"You don't get it, Gwen. Torchwood is dead. It's not coming back."

"But we're still here," she protested. "The Rift's still here."

"I've lost too much, too many people. I need to mourn, and I can't do that here. Too many ghosts haunting me. I can't do that with Torchwood, when Torchwood is what got Tosh and Owen and Suzie killed. It took Ianto from me, Gwen! My brother died there! I need to get away. UNIT said they would take over watching the Rift, and I pulled some strings so that only a few people have access to the ruins of the Hub. I've put plans in place for when I get back, if Ianto wants to do the work again, if you still want to do it. But it won't be the Torchwood you know. It'll be something different." He paused, looked at the sky. She followed his gaze and they both saw a blue light streak across the sky. "Right now, though, there's a cold-fusion cruiser surfing the ion reefs just at the edge of the solar system, waiting to open its transport dock. I just need to send a signal."

"What about Rhiannon and the rest of Ianto's family?" Gwen asked in a last-ditch attempt at convincing him to stay. "They've been looking after you! They love you! Won't they be hurt you're leaving?"

"I've said my goodbyes to them. They know I'm coming back, and roughly when."

"You're serious about going?" Jack simply nodded to answer her question. She sighed, reaching in her pocket to produce his vortex manipulator. "I found it in the wreckage, before you blocked access. Indestructible. Like its owner. I put it on a new strap for you."

"Cost me 50 quid, that," Rhys interjected.

"Bill me," Jack barked, wrapping the leather around his wrist, not bothering to hide his bad mood any longer.

"You'll come back, though? You'll come back when it's time for Ianto to return?"

Jack tilted his head and looked as her as if she'd gone crazy. "Just try and stop me," he replied, the first genuine smile finding his face at the mention of Ianto coming back.

"Be careful," Gwen said.

"You know me," he said with some of his usual bluster. Then his face darkened again. He reached in his pocket and handed her a small box. She opened it at his nod, finding a ring with a large black stone inside. She took it out and held it up in the dim light.

"Oi, don't go giving my wife jewelry!" Rhys shouted, rushing forward.

"Relax, Mr. Caveman," Jack said, holding up a hand. "It's just a way to get in touch with me if there's a dire emergency." He showed her how to use it.

"Jack!" Gwen exclaimed, throwing her arms around him as much as her pregnant belly would allow. "I'm going to miss you!"

"I'll miss you, too, sweetheart," he whispered, kissing her cheek. "Take care of that little one." He turned to Rhys and extended a hand. "Take care of her, Rhys."

"You know I will," he replied, shaking Jack's hand.

Jack stepped back a safe distance from them and pressed a button on his vortex manipulator. It started beeping. "Call me if Ianto comes back early!" he shouted as a blue light enveloped him. When Gwen and Rhys turned back from shielding their eyes from the light, Jack was gone

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tbc