dani_the_girl | Yesterday night, tomorrow morning

Title: Yesterday night, tomorrow morning
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13, I guess? Just because of the aftermath to violence thing really.
Summary: After Lisa has been shot, Jack considers what to do with Ianto
Notes: So yes. The non-angsty thing I mentioned? Not this. This is angsty. My take on what Jack might say and do after Cyberwoman. Thanks to

ahlai and

marita_c for beta assistance, any remaining mistakes are all me :)

For almost a full minute, no-one speaks. They just stare at Ianto, undone and lost, weeping over the body of his girlfriend. Jack gazes round at the mess and realises that it is, of course, up to him to get them moving again. "Owen, go get me a strong sedative and body bags. Gwen, go with him, help him carry these up to the morgue," he gestures to the two broken bodies on the floor. "Tosh, work up some CCTV footage showing pizza girl leaving here so we don't have a missing persons team on the doorstep tomorrow. Everything else can wait until later." Owen and Tosh start moving straight away, holstering their guns, glad to get away but Gwen hesitates, looking between him and Ianto. Jack really doesn't want to get into this conversation with her now so he just holsters his own weapon and glares at her until she leaves.

He leans against the door frame, tired, and wonders what else he's missing. It shouldn't have been possible for Ianto to get away with something like this. Better check the CCTV footage, see if he can piece things together. This reminds him of Tosh's find earlier in the evening. Shit. "Ianto." Ianto gives no sign of having heard him. "Ianto, what happened to your guest from earlier?" The answer seems inevitable, but best to be sure.

For a second, he think's Ianto's too far gone to respond at all, but then he shudders and says thickly "Under the tarp in the store room at the end of the corridor." He moves away from the corpses finally, collapses against the wall with his head in his hands, still crying and shaking with his grief.

"Right," Jack responds grimly keying his comms. "Owen, Gwen, another body bag please." He hears Owen swearing under his breath and Gwen crying out softly, seconds before she comes running down the corridor.

"Jack, no, what have you done?" she says breathlessly, pushing past him towards where Ianto is sitting, tears still flowing freely.

"Nothing," he says, rolling his eyes. It comes out harsher than he meant but would it hurt her to trust him just a little? "There's another body in the store room at the end. Perhaps you'd like to go uncover it and bag it up, please." She turns back towards him, conflicting emotions showing clearly on her face but eventually she seems to decide that he is safe and leaves again, heading towards the storeroom he's indicated.

Owen turns up with the bags and passes a syringe over to Jack before starting to manhandle the delivery girl into one. "How long will it put him out for?" Jack asks.

"Probably three or four hours and hopefully then he'll drift into normal sleep," Owen responds, not turning away from his own tasks. Ianto gives no sign of having heard this but he doesn't resist as Jack sticks him through his clothes either and as his eyes drift shut his weeping finally ceases. Silence descends at last.

"I'm going to sort him out," he says to Owen, daring him to argue. "Take tomorrow off - tell the others. Can you make sure Gwen and Tosh get home once they've finished?"

"Sure, no problem," Owen says. Jack can't decide if Owen trusts him or just doesn't care what happens to Ianto after this but either will do right now. He hefts Ianto's body up in a fireman's lift and heads for his office. He briefly debates the logistics but in the end figures it will be easier to bring the camp bed up through the hole than to manoeuvre an unconscious Ianto down to it. Once this is done, he lays Ianto down, removes his jacket, tie, shoes and socks and covers him with a blanket.

That done, Jack settles down on his desk chair, listening to the sounds of the others moving around in the main area, sorting things out, Gwen and Owen sniping at each other while Tosh finishes with the CCTV footage. When they've finally gone, he heads out and back to the scene of the crime. The cyber conversion unit stands there, silent but still menacing. Refusing to feel the fear, he stalks over to the controls and kicks the casing until it comes loose, exposing the wires and circuit boards. He reaches in with his bare hands, ripping away the connections until there is just a jumble of chaos all over the floor and nothing resembling functioning electronics remains. He even plugs it in, just to be sure; nothing. He stands back and stares morosely at the mess. Not as cathartic as he'd hoped, frankly. He wishes he could start a fire in here but if it were hot enough to melt this stuff it would be impossible to control.

He checks his watch. At least another hour before there's any chance of Ianto waking up and probably much more. He heads for the kitchen to grab a coffee and something to eat then back to his office. He looks through his shelves for something to read, any distraction, but nothing seems to hold his attention; his eyes just slide away from the words. In the end, he gives it up as a bad job and just sits back sipping his coffee and staring at Ianto. Brooding it is, then.

He can't imagine any of the other people on his team doing something like this, something so crazy, so desperate. Owen would have wept and cursed and vowed to wipe out the things that killed her. Tosh would have retreated into silence and designed some crazy weapon or detection system or something, determined not to let it happen again. Gwen, well he doesn't know about Gwen yet. She is yet to be broken, a fact which he finds simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. It makes her incredibly desirable but also so far beyond untouchable. Whereas Ianto... Ianto must have been far more broken than Jack ever realised, shattered into a million pieces, holding onto everything so hard to keep the cracks from showing.

Even when he was so determined to get on the team Jack hadn't read any more into it than Ianto had told him, had figured that Ianto's determination to make himself useful was just survivors guilt. He'd thought he was helping Ianto by keeping him in the Hub, sticking him with the mundane stuff, but now he saw that Ianto hadn't had anything else to occupy him, to ground him. Just Lisa in the basement, waiting. Survivors guilt indeed.

And now what? Now that the fear has dissipated it's taken the fury with it. Jack realises that he doesn't want to lose Ianto from the team. It's not just that they could use him, and if tonight is anything to go by his skills could be useful for a lot more than just making the coffee. Ianto seems to know him much better than he ever knew Ianto, to have seen some of the self he thought was hidden, which is un-nerving but suddenly the idea of someone who doesn't think he's a fucking hero all the time is incredibly tempting. He thinks he could tell Ianto things and maybe Ianto would talk to him and Ianto won't feel any more angry or disgusted at him than he already has been and when he finally finds the Doctor and leaves he won't actually have made Ianto's life worse. Hell, he might even have done him some good; stranger things have happened.

He turns it over in his mind some more, watching Ianto sleep. Eventually, he comes to a decision and heads over to the medical bay for supplies, before grabbing some more coffee and heading back to continue his vigil.

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It is all of ten hours before Ianto wakes, his exhausted mind and body conspiring to keep him under long after the sedative has worn off. If he dreams, it's not obvious to Jack, no tell-tale noises or movement behind the eyelids, just stillness and deep slow breathing. When he finally does open his eyes, they are un-focused and for a long minute or two he gazes at Jack without seeming to see him. Jack can measure the return of consciousness by the way the pain gradually fills up the space behind his eyes. Eventually, the process is complete and he turns his face away from Jack to the wall.

Jack is debating how long to wait before breaking the silence when Ianto breaks it for him. "So are you still planning to kill me then?"

"I checked the HR manual and I'm only allowed to give you a formal warning this time," Jack says lightly.

"You make a threat like that, you better be prepared to follow it through," Ianto quotes, still not looking at him.

"You went in," Jack replies. "I decided that was enough."

"You're too kind." They lapse into silence for a minute.

"In the Hub..." Ianto starts, and then tails off again.

"Yes?" prompts Jack.

Ianto sighs. "You kissed me." His tone has the barest hint of a question in it.

Jack considers this, wondering what he can say about it that Ianto will accept. Somehow, he doubts 'kiss of life' is going to go over very well. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I thought I might not get another chance." This makes Ianto turn his head to stare at him. He tries to keep his face impassive, not give anything away. Ianto swings his feet off the bed, stands up and walks away to look out over the deserted Hub.

"What I said, on the Plass," he begins and then stops again. Jack waits. "I don't want to watch," Ianto continues after a second, "but I won't save you."

"It's a long way too late for that, anyway," Jack responds quietly. "Save the others."

Ianto considers this, and then nods. "So where does that leave us? What happens now?"

Jack digs in his pocket, comes up with two bottles of pills. "It's up to you." He lays them out on the desk and Ianto turns around to watch him. "Three choices."

"Go on," says Ianto, guardedly.

"Choice number one," says Jack, holding up one of the bottles. "You can forget. There's enough Retcon here for you to wipe out all the way back to Canary Wharf if that's what you want." He puts the bottle down, pauses for a second and then picks up the second one. "Choice number two. You can finish it. If that was all you were living for, you can be done. Painless." He puts the bottle down, watching Ianto carefully, trying to gauge his reaction, needing to know that Ianto isn't considering this.

Ianto stares at him. "And choice number three?" he asks faintly.

"Stay here. Take a month off to get your head together then come back and help us. We can use you and in more places than just the kitchen."

"Why would you trust me again?" Ianto asks, looking honestly curious.

"You brought her here," Jack replies. Ianto raises an eyebrow, but stays quiet. "You must have had that thing hooked up before we met otherwise she would have died. And sure, you had better access to parts here, you could comb our databases for cyber-technologists but you didn't need to store her here for that; you just needed access. You bought her here because if it went wrong, there was a chance we could deal with it."

Ianto turns away again, leans his forehead against the glass. Jack has to resist the temptation to get up, rest a hand on his shoulder, offer some kind of comfort, make a connection.

"Okay then," Ianto says softly, after a moment. "Choice number three it is."