Electricity
Aug. 4th, 2008 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dani_the_girlTitle: Electricity
Fandom: Torchwood
Summary: An unwelcome blast from Ianto's past turns up in connection with Torchwood's latest investigation.
Rating/Warnings: Gen, team, implied pairings as canon. Jack!death.
Notes: So, this is my first attempt at coming up with my own Torchwood plot. I was fascinated by the description of Ianto's history from Fragments - it was so unlike how I had imagined it so I decided to try to build a story where a little more is revealed. This pushes him even more towards the bad boy side of the tracks than Fragments, but it is basically consistent with what Jack said there if you assume that he just didn't get caught much.
"So, Gwen, any connection between our bums yet?" Jack asked with a grin, breezing down the stairs from his office to where Gwen was fiddling around on her computer with the results of the various scans she'd been doing.
"We call them tramps here, Jack, thank you, and no, nothing yet. Except that I still can't make some of the scanners work. They just keep coming up blank." She stared at her screen in frustration. "I've been over Owen's notes again and again and they should be working, but I can't get any results."
"Hmmm," mused Jack. "Interesting. Let me have a look."
Ianto smiled internally and went back to trying to coax the mainframe into giving him access to some of the private CCTV cameras. At least Owen left notes, he thought wryly. Tosh could really have commented some of this code a little more. He almost immediately felt guilty for thinking it. He could just see Tosh now, typing at top speed, probably still finding even that too slow to get all the ideas out of her head and into the programme.
He didn't think Gwen was likely to find anything genuinely out of the ordinary between the homeless people who'd been turning up dead recently. The sudden upswing in the numbers and odd patterns of wounds on the bodies - punctures in the neck, skull and heart - had prompted DI Swanson to get in touch with them but in all honesty, it was junkies getting behind on their payments and falling foul of an unusually psychotic dealer - they were all in the area for it and the chemical tests showed traces of crack in the hair. Still, things had been quiet recently and he was glad Jack had let Gwen pursue it - it was the most involved in work he'd seen her since Gray and at least it was getting her to practice with the equipment. They were still muddling along with just the three of them, none of them feeling quite up to the idea of actually looking for replacements yet.
He tried to concentrate on piecing together exactly how the logic of the CCTV code was supposed to work and currently wasn't in the case of the new shopping centre. He was just starting to get into it when Jack slipped up behind him and completely derailed his train of thought by leaning in and kissing him on the back of the neck. Still, it was time he was taking a break anyway, he thought, and twisted around to find Jack up in his personal space as usual. "Coffee?" he asked with a smile; it always amused him to tease Jack in the office. Jack grinned. "Well, if that's what's on offer, that'll do. Bring it down to the medical bay - Gwen and I are going to have another shot at some of those scans."
By the time the beans had been ground, the brew percolated, adulterants added and Ianto had made it to the medical bay, Jack and Gwen were all set up, heads bent over the latest corpse to be passed their way. Gwen's face was screwed up in an expression of intense concentration as she ran the scanner over the body, twisting the various dials and trying to get a response. Eventually she thrust it at Jack, annoyance plain, and said "You try! I can't get it to work at all!"
Jack turned it over in his hands. "We're sure this is supposed to work on dead people, yes?"
"I got Ianto to dig up the archive notes and he says yes," Gwen replied doubtfully. "Indeed," Ianto contributed, coming down the steps and passing out the coffees. "The notes say you should be able to use it to detect masses, like a mini MRI scanner. Owen used to use it to do a basic organ check on the ones that looked human to make sure they looked human all the way through. Apparently, it gets less effective after a while, but you should be able to use it on the recently dead."
"And this one was only brought in yesterday," Gwen pointed out, "and not dead more than 24 hours before that, according to the report."
Jack flipped the switches the notes said should turn the scanner on and tried a couple of passes over the old man with no better luck. He shrugged and was just in the process of passing it over to Ianto to see if he could make anything of it when it suddenly beeped and started to show something. They all jumped in surprise but as soon as Jack turned it back towards the body, nothing again. He pivoted back towards Ianto, and got more beeping. "I forgot to turn it off," he said, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, thanks Jack!" Ianto said, "Perhaps you could pass the probably malfunctioning alien tech to someone who'll pay a bit more attention?"
"No, it's not malfunctioning, though, is it?" Jack said and reached his hand under the sensor area. Immediately, lights began to flash and a picture to solidify. He moved his hand away again. Silence. They all looked at each other.
"What else have you tried this on, Gwen," Ianto asked after a second. "Just the other two of these we had in last week, I think," she replied. "There hasn't been much that's needed examination recently - we already know what weevils look like inside."
"Hmmm, do we have any other corpses we can test on?" Jack asked. "It might have a dead person button that we haven't hit yet."
Only at Torchwood, Ianto thought, trying to think through the last few days of activity. Most things were either already incinerated or returned to their relatives or the city for burial with cover story attached but there was a victim of weevil attack earlier in the week that hadn't yet been identified and was therefore still safely stored in the morgue. He sighed, trying not to get depressed at the thought of the sheer number of bodies which seemed to pass through Torchwood, both human and otherwise, and motioned the other two over to the appropriate drawer.
Jack opened it up and passed the scanner carefully over the body inside. After only a second, it started to flash its lights and show images of the girl's internal organs. Jack shut it off again and they all looked at each other. "Well," Ianto said, breaking the silence, "It doesn't have a dead person button."
Gwen made a face. "No it doesn't, which means that something else is going on - I told you! Come on, let's see if we can correlate it with rift activity."
Ianto frowned, watching the road. Five weevils had been a bit more of a workout than he'd been hoping for that evening. They still hadn't come up with anything to connect their dead down and outs other than the area they'd been found in and he'd had to leave his trawl for information about that in progress on his computer while he joined the others for a bag and tag operation. He checked on Gwen in the rear view mirror; she was pale but looking alert. She insisted her arm wouldn't need stitches and he was not keen on the idea of forcing her down to A&E for them anyway. They really were going to have to face up to this recruitment thing, he thought morosely.
"Hey, Ianto," said Jack tightly, breaking the silence. Ianto glanced over to see Jack fidgeting in his seat; not a good sign. "Yes?" he responded cautiously. "Isn't this the edge of our mystery area coming up on the left?" Jack asked. "From Cape Street down towards the docks," Ianto admitted. "Drop me off," ordered Jack, "I'm going to have a look around."
Ianto considered arguing the point but Jack was doing this more and more lately. He just didn't like to be still anymore and seemed to be finding even the Hub claustrophobic at times. At least there weren't likely to be any other weevils up and around in this area of town tonight. He pulled over. "OK, but keep your comms open," he said. "If you go off line, I'm coming back to get you."
"I'll be fine," smiled Jack, happy now he'd got his way as usual. Ianto glared at him and he added, "OK! I promise. Comms open. Let me know what the analysis says when you get back, yeah?" He hopped out of the car and Ianto and Gwen exchanged glances in the mirror. "Not a problem," Ianto said with a small smile. "See you back at base."
"Yeah, later," replied Jack vaguely and headed off briskly into the dark streets.
"Too much time in the deep freeze," Gwen said briskly and smiled at Ianto with her mouth only. "He'll be fine again before you know it." Ianto didn't reply, just put the SUV back into gear and pushed the speed limit all the way back to the Hub.
They pulled up and emptied the SUV of its comatose load, carting the weevils down to the cells to await chemical castration before being released, their aggression dormant. That done, he turned to Gwen and said "You should go home to Rhys."
"Oh no," she said firmly, "I'm going to patch up my arm and then I'll stay here. Just in case." In case of what he wanted to ask, but why else was he doing the same thing, after all, so he let it pass. "Fine," he said, "I'll go check on Jack and then make us some coffees." She smiled at him, clearly hoping to reassure, and headed off to the medical bay for tape and sterile dressings while he addressed his computer.
It took him a few moments to get the tracker programme working but then there was Jack, green light indicating an open channel, as promised. He hadn't actually made it far from where they'd dropped him off, probably been nosing around inside buildings or something - there were a lot of empty warehouses around there, some of them quite derelict. He keyed his own headset to check in. "Jack," he said softly, "anything unusual?"
"All quiet on the Western Front," came Jack's voice out of the speakers, quiet but sounding cheerful. "What did the searches dig up on the area?"
"Just checking it out now," Ianto responded, switching windows. "Looks like the area you're in now is all empty units - no rental agreements, council tax payments, electricity hookups showing up. Could be squatters though. Further east, there's some occupied ones, mostly storing retail goods in transit by the look of it."
"Okay, track back the details of the occupied ones, see if there's anything interesting about the occupiers. I'll see if I can find any squatters who might have seen something." Ianto made the coffees for Gwen and himself and then settled down to see what he could find out about the used buildings in the area. He'd reached a point of being quite relaxed, working away on the question, listening to the various night-time sounds drifting back to them from Jack's open comms link, when Jack suddenly hissed "Hey, Ianto!"
"Jack?" he responded, instinctively lowering his own voice as he replied. "Who's the occupier of the building around the corner from me?" Jack asked quietly. Ianto pulled up the map and cross referenced his earlier results. "No-one, sir. It's another two cross streets in that direction before you get to the in-use ones."
"Interesting," came Jack's whispered drawl, "because someone has left the lights on." Ianto raised his eyebrow and double checked his results from earlier. "They're not connected to the mains, sir," he confirmed. "Could be a generator?"
"Damn quiet if it is," Jack replied. "I'm going to take a look."
"Jack, you should come back here and see what else we can find out, or at least wait for some backup," Ianto said, trying to sound firm, and not worried. "Nonsense. I'll be fine," Jack said, doing a rather better job, "I'll just have a very quiet look around, make sure there aren't any other luckless victims in the area."
"Jack," Ianto started to protest. "Radio silence," Jack cut him off. Ianto subsided, watching his screen and trying not to fret as Jack started to move around the building. At least he'd left the comms open, he thought, listening to Jack's barely vocalised curses as the doors he tried proved to be securely locked. Ianto was just starting to think that Jack would have to come back to base anyway, when he heard the click of a latch and Jack's whispered "Gotcha!" before his GPS tracker dot moved inside the building.
Gwen came back up from the medical bay and Ianto quietly filled her in on what was going on. She rolled her eyes but offered no other comment, heading over to her own station to follow events from there. When Jack finally spoke again, they both jumped. "Well it's not a generator," he said quietly, "because I'm looking at the generator and it's not even connected."
"Could be an old one, kept for spares," Gwen suggested. "Not a spot of rust on it," Jack replied. "Looks new, in fact. Curiouser and curiouser. I'm going to see what else I can find - I though I heard some movement a minute ago."
"Jack, you should wait for backup," Ianto protested uselessly. "I won't get close," Jack promised quietly, "just try to get a look and see what we're up against."
They heard the door open again, and Jack move out into the corridor again and then...
CRACK
The sound of a gunshot.
"Shit!" Gwen said, sharply. Jack's comms channel was still open and they could hear at least two pairs of feet jogging closer, and then a voice.
"Well, what have we here?" Ianto froze. Where did he know that voice from? There was a fumbling noise and then the voice came back, much clearer. He must have taken Jack's headset, Ianto realised. "Or should I say, who do we have here?" it asked. Suddenly it hit him. "Nick?" he asked, unbelieving.
There was a silence. Then, "Ianto Jones. Long time, no postcards, boyo. Who's your friend."
"We're just working a private security gig together," Ianto lied. "Leave him, I'll pick him up."
"Oh no, he may be dead and gone, but he's still useful," Nick chuckled.
"What the hell are you on about," Ianto snapped, just hoping Jack wouldn't wake up while this conversation was going on.
"Never you mind. We're plenty secure around here. You just keep your distance. You're good at that." Nick sneered and the link went dead.
Ianto wanted to break something, but he settled for putting his head in his hands for a minute and taking a few deep breaths. Nick. That was bad news on its own without him apparently having plans for Jack's currently lifeless body.
"So," asked Gwen after a moment. "Old friend?"
And then some, he thought but out loud replied "You could say that."
"He didn't sound overjoyed to hear from you again," Gwen observed curiously.
"No. We didn't part on very good terms," Ianto admitted, and, realising he really didn't want to talk about what those terms had been, added "It was a bad breakup."
"Ianto Jones!" she exclaimed, diverted as he'd known she would be. "Are you telling me that what we have here is Jack in the clutches of your psycho ex boyfriend?"
"Why, Gwen," he teased, amused at her obvious surprise at the revelation, "did you think I was only gay for Jack?"
She blushed and turned back to her computer. A hit, he thought wryly. A very palpable hit. "Yes, well," she said after a second to gather her wits. "I'll have you know that all my ex boyfriends are perfect gentlemen."
Time to get back to business, he thought. "The question is what on earth is Nick into." His heart sank a little as he thought about possible answers to that question. "He always had an eye to the main chance. If he got hold of something from the Rift I'm sure he'd find something dubious to use it for."
"Hmmm. Surname?" asked Gwen.
"Moralis." Ianto supplied.
"Right." She poked around on the computer for a few minutes. "Quite a few arrests and a lot more notes about suspicious activity. Dropped off the radar for a few months at the start of the year and recently seems to be getting into the crack business." She frowned. "Coming from they know not where. Police have been holding off in the hopes of tracing it back up the chain."
He thought about it. "That would fit. Nick always thought dealing would give him a bit of status, cash to flash but he was too mouthy to get in with any of the guys and work his way up. If he found something he could use to take a shortcut he'd be all over it."
Gwen sighed. "Well, whatever it is, you're going to have to go and find out and I'm not going to be able to come with you." She gestured to her arm, which was fairly heavily bandage wrapped. "I'm not going to manage any sort of recoil with this. Which means that we need a helping hand." He stared at her, momentarily at a loss before the light dawned. "Oh no! We don't need to make this any worse than it already is, thank you very much!"
"We need another pair of hands, one that can shoot straight, and you've got to admit it's got nice symmetry to it," she smiled.
"Gwen, our ex boyfriends do not annihilate like matter and anti-matter. They're more likely to get together and double our problems - Nick must be into something out of the common way and you know what Hart is like."
"He won't go against Jack," Gwen pointed out firmly.
Ianto wanted to protest further but she was probably right about that and she was definitely right that he shouldn't go in alone if it could be avoided. "Fine," he said, giving in, "but I'm going to be the one to ring him."
He switched the scanner over to look for the mobile phone they'd given Hart, perversely hoping he'd find the other man somewhere well out of the way, across an ocean perhaps, but no, he was in London. Typical. He dialled the number.
"Eye-candy!" came the expansive voice over the phone. Too cheerful by half, Ianto thought. "Hart," he replied. "We need your help. How soon can you be down here?"
"Love to, but I'm a bit tied up at the minute," Hart leered down the line.
"Untangle yourself," Ianto replied firmly.
"Now now, wait your turn, eye-candy. Get your blue eyed boy to handle it."
"Believe me, I wish I could. Listen," Ianto said and gave him an outline of the evening's events.
"Well, well!" said Hart speculatively when he'd finished. "Who would have thought you had it in you, eye-candy? I'll be with you in a couple of hours."
Ianto looked at the map and tried not to think about how fast John would therefore be driving. "He's on his way," he told Gwen. "Now we just have to figure out what we're going to do when he gets here.
Half an hour before Hart was due to show, Ianto's comms chimed. He looked at his screen in confusion and saw that Jack's channel had gone green again, still located in the same building as before. "Jack?" he murmured cautiously.
"Yan," came a familiar voice through his headset, but not the one he'd been hoping for. His heart sank again. "Nick," he replied tightly. "Can I help."
"Just a friendly warning, Yan. Whoever you're working for, keep your fucking nose out."
"We're just keeping an eye on things for Chandlers," Ianto said, randomly naming one of the companies with a unit close by. "Jack just got bored and went wandering. Long night shift."
"Webleys standard issue to private security grunts these days, are they?" Nick retorted with sarcasm. "You can tell your boss, who ever that is, that I'm sharing my supply with no one. And as for you, it's not in your interest to get me into trouble, see." Ianto's throat tightened and he flipped the switch to take the conversation off the speakers should Gwen be finished in the weapons locker before it was done.
"You've nothing left from that," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "Just leave it, Nick."
"Want to bet?" Nick's reply came back taunting and confident. "After you did a runner? I went back and picked up some insurance. You head back down what ever rabbit hole you've been hiding and leave well alone." The line went dead and Ianto had to resist the impulse to put his fist through the screen in frustration. Instead, he tried to think about it rationally. Nick hadn't bought their cover story, but that wasn't a problem as he seemed to have come up with one for himself.
What was going to be a problem was that he thought he had some evidence against Ianto. Ianto couldn't imagine him being very good at fabricating evidence but even so, better to be prepared. He turned to his computer and fired up the police case history database.
"Right," Gwen said softly, concentrating on the computer screen they'd shifted forward to the front of the SUV for her. "We couldn't find any floor plans, so I can't give you rooms but I'm getting three heat signals. Two of them are together towards the middle of the building and the other one is somewhere in the back left."
"Very useful, love," Hart sneered. "So either one of them's with Jack or he's on his own. Never would have figured that out without your help." He made to open his door.
"Yes, well, at least you know how many to expect," Gwen replied tartly. "If anyone else enters the building or they start moving around I'll let you know. If you're coming out in a rush call me so I can start her up. And don't bloody shoot them - we still need to know what the hell they've been doing."
"Take all the fun out of it, why don't you," said Hart with an eye roll and stepped out. Ianto followed and said to Hart "I'm going to see if there's another entrance. Wait here until I signal." Hart grinned wolfishly and hefted his gun and Ianto gave him a hard look before starting around the side of the building. "Don't fuck this up." he said quietly into his comms as he left and heard Hart's answering snort.
Around the back there was indeed another entrance and Ianto could see light filtering out from the windows and around the edge of the door. "I'm in position," he said into the comms, attaching the unlocking device he'd bought from the hub to the door as he talked. "Gwen, how close am I to the person in the back half of the building?"
"Fairly," she replied. "Start checking doors and turnings on your right pretty much as soon as you get in."
"Leaving me with the other two," Hart broke in. "Let's do this thing, Jones." The door gave a click as he said it and Ianto quickly pocketed the unlocker and readied his gun. "Ready. Go."
Once inside, he found he didn't particularly need to worry about making a wrong turn because the corridor up ahead on the right was clearly brighter than the one he was in. He headed up it, ears pricked for any sounds of movement but he could only hear a steady buzzing hum and an occasional clatter. About 200 metres up were a pair of closed double doors from which both the noise and the light appeared to be coming. He listened but couldn't hear anything new. "Gwen?" he whispered on his comms.
"You're almost on top of the heat signature in your part of the building," her voice said quietly in his ear.
"Here goes," he muttered and opened the door.
Without the solidity of a fire door in the way, his Rift sensor began to go off in the pocket of his trousers almost immediately. In front of him, and the source of all the humming and the light was a large white and steel machine covered in lights and control panels. It had several orifices, and out of one a small but steady flow of white powder was emptying into a bucket. Nick's supply, he thought grimly. He moved cautiously around the side of the contraption to get a look at the rest of the room, and then stopped dead, staring horrified for a moment before pulling himself together and keying his comms. "Hart," he said quietly, "get over here. I've found Jack."
It was Gwen, not Hart, that responded. "I think he's engaged the others, Ianto. Can you hold on?"
Not for long, he thought, looking at the scene before him. Jack was lying on what appeared to be an operating table, straps across his torso and legs holding him in place. Around his neck was some sort of collar with protruding wires which looked like it was supporting shunts into his spinal column. It also served as an anchor for a sort of metallic headband which held shunts pushed directly into Jack's head, presumably contacting his brain. A further set drilled into his chest at more or less the right position for the heart. There was surprisingly little blood, but Ianto still wanted to vomit. Jack's body was twitching arrhythmically, as if he was fitting. His eyes were open, rolled up so that almost none of the iris could be seen, and seemed to be flickering from side to side. All the shunts connected via what looked like electrical cabling to the glowing machine. Ianto forced himself to move over to the table and check. Thready pulse, weak but definitely there. Oh god.
"Right." Harts voice came over his ear piece, far to loud, too brash. "Assuming this was a two man operation, we're dandy."
"You've got them secure?" Ianto asked quietly.
"Yup. One unconscious and one pissing himself," Hart affirmed.
"Bring them over here," Ianto said flatly.
"Hey, I didn't sign up to this for manual labour," Hart started, but Ianto overrode him.
"Then get your prisoner to do it. Just bring them."
Hart must have heard the warning in Ianto's voice because he didn't complain any further and it was less than a minute before Ianto could hear the sounds of movement in the passage he'd come in through. Grateful for the excuse, he stepped away from Jack to cover the door as it was pushed open by a stocky dark haired man leaning down to drag another through with him. A quick glance at the downed man confirmed that he was Nick, looking almost the same as he had those years ago, lines of anger or age smoothed out in the slackness of unconsciousness. Ianto transferred his attention back up to the other man, who did indeed look terrified. As soon as he had Nick clear of the door he backed away from Ianto and the machine to the wall. After swallowing convulsively for a few moments, he whispered "Just take it and go, man. I swear you'll never hear from us again."
Hart swaggered in behind them, took one look at the machine and stopped dead. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed, and spun around to confront their prisoner. "Where the hell did you get that?"
"It's Nick's," he managed to get out after a second. "I don't know, I swear."
"You must have got it working for him though," Ianto snapped. "Nick never was any good with machines." The kid just nodded. If it wasn't for Jack lying there on the table, Ianto would have felt almost sorry for him.
"Bodge job," said Hart, dismissively. "You think they're supposed to glow like that? Bloody wasteful."
"Whatever," Ianto replied impatiently. "Just turn it off." Nick was already stirring on the ground and he just wanted to get out of there before anything happened to mess things up.
"Temper, temper," Hart said absently as he circled the machine. "Mess this is in, I'm surprised it's working at all. Any sudden moves and we might all not live to regret it, if you know what I mean." Ianto stared along the barrel of his gun to where Nick was scrambling to his feet and thought very carefully about just shooting him and claiming he'd resisted. Unfortunately, while Hart was bound to be persuadable to keep quiet, Ianto doubted his price would be low. And of course there would be the little matter of his conscience. Plus Jack wouldn't have approved. Damn it.
As Hart circled the machine muttering to himself, Nick finally stood up and gave Ianto a death glare. No change there then, he thought, and fought down the insane urge to giggle. To keep his mind off Jack on the table behind him, he said "I see you replaced me then. Could do with a bit more backbone, perhaps."
"Fuck off." Nick said succinctly and closed his mouth with a snap.
"Name?" Ianto asked the other man pleasantly.
"Tim," he replied softly. Nick transferred the death glare briefly before switching back to Ianto.
"So, Tim, are you an accessory here or just an idiot?" Ianto asked politely. "And you, stand still and shut up," he added as Nick looked like he was going to step closer and actually deck Tim to keep him quiet. Tim looked horrified. He swallowed hard a couple of times and then said "I swear they were all dead already, we just hooked them up after, honest. It doesn't seem to work any other way - I tried powering it off the generator but that just sent sparks everywhere."
"Bit of both then. Even crack addicts don't die at that rate. I expect they were behind with their payments so Nick gave them a little something on account and collected the bodies in the morning."
Tim looked like he was going to be sick. "I don't know," he whispered.
"And tonight?" Ianto asked inexorably.
"He took us by surprise. I never heard anything but there he was in the corridor." Tim stared at the ground. "I didn't know Nick had a gun." Ianto stared at him for a long moment before transferring his gaze to Nick, who was still trying to stare him down.
"No, that I can believe," he said. "Hart, get the hell on with it."
"Patience, eye candy! Just gotta dial this down a bit, and then..." the humming rapidly downshifted in pitch, seemed to stabilize for a moment and then cut out. "There!" Hart exclaimed triumphantly. A second later, the glow too disappeared, leaving the room in near darkness, lit only by the streetlights filtering through the inexpertly boarded windows.
As soon as it did, Nick jumped for the gun. Fortunately, that was so predictable that Ianto was fully braced for it. He swung to one side and grabbed Nick as he went past, pushing him over and landing on top of him hard enough to wind him. He grabbed Nick's arms into a lock and knelt on him, panting "Bloody well give over, Nick. You are done, OK."
"Nice moves, eye-candy!" came Hart's voice. "I've got the other one. Bring any restraints?"
"Must you make everything sound like an innuendo?" Ianto asked exasperated. "And yes I did. Right pocket of my jacket." He felt Hart reach in and separate out one of the pairs of cuffs. "Do yours and then cover Nick while I cuff him."
Once the two captives were safely restrained, Ianto dug his torch out of his other pocket and reluctantly turned it towards the operating table. "Now," he said, "lets get that stuff off him before he wakes up." It was a struggle to get the shunts out - it looked like the wounds had started to close up around them and by the time they were done, there was rather more blood all around the place. Even detached, Jack continued to twitch gently, showing almost no change in his state. Checking again, Ianto found the pulse thready but still there. "What's it done to him?" he asked softly.
"Mind wipe, probably," Hart said, even his normally cheerful voice a little subdued. "It's a Metavital Reliquary; drains the body's electrical and psychic energy to create objects. It's supposed to be for creating, like, memorial objects using the energy left after you die. No electricity, no brain."
Ianto turned on his heel, leaving Hart staring thoughtfully at the body on the table, and stalked over to Nick, dragging him up to eye level with a fist knotted in the front of his jacket. "If you've permanently damaged him with that thing," he started.
Nick spat at him. "For fuck's sake, Ianto. He's been dead for hours, which you already knew when you came here. What the fuck are you on." This didn't deserve a reply but Ianto was seriously considering just punching his lights out when for the second time this evening he heard the CRACK of a gunshot echoing around the room and this time a lot closer up. He dropped Nick and spun around, grabbing for his own gun, wondering why Gwen hadn't warned them about whoever had turned up now.
"Relax, eye-candy," Hart said nonchalantly, pocketing his pistol. Ianto gaped at him and then at the table where, after a second of being too shocked to process, he realised that Hart had just shot Jack in the head. Almost reflexively he raised his revolver to aim at Hart's chest. Hart spread his arms wide in a gesture of injured innocence and protested "Come on, Jones! He needed a reboot. How long does this usually take anyway?"
"It varies," Ianto replied numbly, forcing himself to lower and re-holster his gun again.
"Fine," Hart said irritably. "You stay here and nursemaid. The lovely PC and I will do the leg work." He hit his comms. "Ms Cooper?"
"John!" her voice came back over the ether almost immediately. "Everything under control?"
"Surely is, love. Two idiots here waiting to be taken into your custody. Oh, and we caught Ianto's old flame and his mate too." Gwen laughed. "I'll bring the SUV around the back," she replied.
Jack still hadn't revived by the time they got back to the Hub. Gwen gave him a worried look and then dragged John with her to get their two prisoners situated and arrange with the local police to have the warehouse watched until they could collect the Reliquary. Ianto paid scant attention to all of this, just carried Jack's body to the medical area where he cleaned it meticulously and changed it into clean clothes before grabbing a stool and settling down to wait.
He was still waiting two hours later when Gwen came to find him. If he'd been less preoccupied or less sleep deprived he would have been forewarned by the stormy look on her face. As it was he hardly noticed her coming in, his focus narrowed until little but Jack's lifeless body was visible. It was like watching a plant grow, he thought vaguely, staring and staring, searching for signs of change.
"Ianto," Gwen said, voice hard, "I need a word in the conference room, please."
He looked up at her, startled. "Can't it wait until..." he asked, gesturing vaguely at Jack's body.
"No. Now."
He stared at her in surprise, trying to think. He would have heard rift alarms from in here if there had been any, surely? And their only other problem was under lock and key. At that thought, light began to dawn fast and he wanted to kick himself for leaving her and Hart to deal with the prisoners, for being so preoccupied with Jack, being determined to be there when he woke up. Now that his brain was working again, he only had to look at her to know she'd been talking to Nick. Or rather Nick had been talking to her.
"Fine," he said tightly. "Just a sec." He scribbled a quick note for Jack on the page of a loose leaf notepad, tore it out and tucked it under his hand.
They marched up to the conference room in silence and sat down on opposite sides of the table, staring at each other. Presumably, Gwen was waiting for him to say something, Ianto thought, perhaps ask what was bothering her, but he had plenty of practice at interviews with police officers. Never start the conversation. It didn't take long before she caved, although her voice was gentler than Ianto had expected when she asked "Look, Ianto, is there anything you want to tell me."
"Not particularly, no," he said shortly, "but I doubt my wishes come into the matter. Can we not at least wait until Jack is up? I'd rather not go over this more than once." She stared at him, her anger and distress warring with her instinct to trust a colleague over a prisoner, not bothering to try to keep her emotions off her face. No wonder she'd been a beat copper rather than a detective, Ianto thought inconsequentially. "And even then it's just going to be Nick's word against mine." And whatever he'd cooked up from the crime scene, Ianto thought grimly. He hadn't even checked on the results of his own searches, too busy watching Jack.
"It doesn't have to be," came Jack's voice from the doorway. They both jumped to their feet, startled, too intent on each other to have heard his approach. "Gwen," he said by way of greeting, giving her a quick hug. "Ianto." He crossed the room and enveloped Ianto in a rather more vigorous one. "Don't worry," he told Ianto quietly, "Whatever it is, it'll be fine. I know you're not a killer." Ianto let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He took Jack's hand briefly and squeezed, saying "Thanks".
"Wait here a moment, kids, I'll be right back," Jack assured them and swept out of the room again. Ianto and Gwen sat down again, looking uncomfortably at each other.
"Where's Hart?" Ianto asked, suddenly realising that he hadn't even thought of, much less seen, the other man since they'd got back to the Hub.
"He said, and I quote, that he was buggered if he was going to wait around here for Jack to sleep it off and where could he go for a little bit of fun in this town," Gwen said with a smile. "I resisted the urge to direct him to the dogs home, don't worry. He's going to check in tomorrow morning before he heads back to London."
"Right," Jack said briskly, marching back into the room with a solid box under his arm. They both watched curiously as he fiddled around getting what looked like a microphone set up and tweaking the settings until he was happy with them. Perhaps he was going to record the interview, Ianto thought vaguely.
Once they were all sat down, Jack turned to Gwen and said "Now we're ready. This is a lie detector; most accurate ever designed, certainly way more accurate than anything else on this planet right now. Obviously, lying is based on belief, so there is still room for people to be wrong about things that this confirms but if we're talking contradicting statements, it should sort out the sheep from the goats. Test it, Gwen. Tell the most plausible lie you can think of."
She glared at him. "Put me on the spot, why don't you! Ummm, OK. I'm very fond of my mother-in-law." The light flashed red.
"I said plausible lie, Gwen," Jack sighed.
"Okay, okay! I first slept with Rhys five months after I started seeing him." Red again.
"Earlier or later?" Jack asked with a grin.
"Earlier, actually, but just the once." Green light. "Okay, that is impressive. I don't think anyone except Rhys and I knows that."
"Excellent," Jack said briskly. "Then let's get on with it. I still know almost nothing about this. Ianto said you thought he killed someone. Why?" He flashed a reassuring smile at Ianto before turning back to focus on Gwen, who was looking considerably less sure of herself than she had been when she'd come storming up from the cells.
"Well, Nick told me that when he and Ianto were dating," Gwen started.
"Whoa, whoa, back up!" Jack exclaimed. "Remember I've been dead for about," he looked at his watch, "five hours apparently. No wonder I have a splitting headache. I need more explanation than that. Start at the beginning."
"Maybe it's better if I tell it, Jack," Ianto suggested, earning him a relieved glance from Gwen. Without waiting for confirmation, he plunged into it, explaining the events of the night succinctly and including the second call from Nick, which had Gwen raising her eyebrows but as the machine stayed green lit throughout she made no demural. As for Jack, he seemed amused if anything, although his eyes lit up when Ianto described the machine he'd been hooked up to.
As Ianto ground to a halt, Jack looked at them both quizzically. "So far, so good, by the sound of it. Perpetrators awaiting interview and Retcon, Reliquary safely stashed, me tucked in upstairs. I still haven't heard any kind of accusation though. Gwen?"
Gwen looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, I was asking Nick about the tramps, how he'd got hold of the bodies, see. He said I shouldn't be so self righteous if I was hanging around with Ianto and he, well, he made some accusations. He claimed that Ianto had been responsible for the murder of Laura Barrett." Ianto shut his eyes. It wasn't exactly unexpected but he'd managed not to think about that night for so long. Just the name stung.
Jack, on the other hand, looked blank. "Who? Doesn't ring a bell?"
"Well, maybe you weren't in Cardiff at the time," Gwen said. "She was a special constable, killed by a stab wound to the heart after coming off shift about 4 years ago. They never found out where or by who."
Jack's expression cleared. "Oh yeah, I remember. It was never out of the papers for weeks."
"It was the brutal unresolved killing of someone just trying to do their bit for their community. Surprisingly, people took an interest," Gwen replied sharply.
"So," Jack said, watching her face thoughtfully, "did he back this up at all? Give any more detail?"
With a look of determination, Gwen replied "Yes, there was more detail, but I'm not going to go into it now."
Jack looked like he was about to protest, but Ianto broke in. "It's fine, Jack. Standard procedure. See what I say before I've heard the full detail of the other story, see where they reinforce, where they contradict." Gwen nodded, looking relieved that Ianto was apparently resigned to it, and Jack subsided. Ianto took a deep breath, trying to decide where to begin. He found he couldn't quite bring himself to look at either of them while he talked, keeping his eyes fixed on the green lights flashing on Jack's lie detector instead.
"As Gwen said, it was about four years ago now. Nick and I were pinching some CDs from a warehouse. I was temping for their cleaning contractors and I'd left the door out the back unfastened. I was arranging the boxes in the van and Nick was going in and carrying the stuff out." He remembered their joking argument about it on the way there, Nick claiming that Ianto should do the carrying because he knew the way, Ianto saying that having to put up with doing the cleaning shifts was quite enough leg work, thanks very much.
"We were nearly done. Nick had dumped a pile of boxes by the van for me to load up and was taking the loading trolley we'd been using back to the factory. I was sorting things out in the van when I heard someone ask Nick if the van was his. He said it wasn't, he was just helping out a friend with a late delivery. She asked if she could speak to the driver." He'd had to stave off the urge to panic, quickly chuck a tarpaulin from the van's daytime incarnation as transport for Nick's decorator brother over the boxes closest to the door before jumping down, thinking they could brazen it out. Too slow.
"I got out to speak to her, but by the time I got there Nick already had a knife out and he'd stuck it in her." There'd been so much blood. She'd made a horrible noise, a kind of wet gasp. No scream. He remembered being surprised by that. Jack's touch on his hand made him physically start; he looked up to see the sympathetic look on Jack's face and returned the grasp before carrying on. "I didn't even know he had one."
"We got the tarps out of the van and wrapped the body up in them. Mopped up most of the blood. The cleaning cupboard was just by that door so we tipped over one of the industrial size bleach containers over the place, made it look like someone had been careless and it'd all run out in that direction under the door. Not a great job, but obviously good enough. Dumped the body in the river. Incinerated the bloody clothes. Went home." Had sex, Nick wild eyed and hyper, fucking into him. He'd been numb, shocked, hadn't been hard but Nick hadn't cared. He ground to a halt, still staring at the lights on the detector.
There was a long silence. Eventually, Gwen said "And you didn't report this? If you'd volunteered yourself as a witness they wouldn't have pressed charges on moving the body, just put it down as not wanting to confront an obviously violent man directly. But you covered it up. Why?"
Ianto frowned, thinking back. His thought processes then seemed so alien now, unconsidered for so many years. "I didn't think anyone would actually believe me." They'd spent so much time lying to the police, dodging them, laughing at them. "I didn't trust the police and they didn't trust me. And Nick was always the smooth talker of the two of us. He would have got it all turned around and me in the dock for it by the end of the day."
Gwen looked skeptical, but let it pass. "And when you came back?" she pressed.
"When I came back I had other things on my mind," Ianto replied shortly and Gwen had the grace to not look down or away, but just nod in recognition.
"So," Jack said, low and angry sounding, "happy now?"
"No, not particularly," Gwen shot back. "I'll need to take that down to the cells and get another statement from Nick and then I am, by God, going to find enough evidence from somewhere to charge Laura's killer." She gathered up the detector and headed out of the conference rooms and across the Hub. Jack and Ianto sat back and stared at each other.
"You OK?" Jack asked after a moment.
Ianto gave the question some honest consideration. Physical state: no damage, tired, running on empty and in need of a cup of coffee. Mental end emotional: churned up, tired, running on empty and in need of a cup of coffee. "I'll be fine. Long day."
"Yeah, I hear that," Jack agreed ruefully. He got up and came around the table to perch next to Ianto, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together.
"Jack," Ianto tried, "I'm sorry about all this." About Nick taking you away and killing you again. About the fact that Gwen is probably going to hate me for months. That I'm not the person you thought I was.
"Leave it," Jack said firmly. "It's all in the past. You would have left it there if you could. I should be apologising; I'm sorry I rushed in tonight. I needed to be moving but you were right, we should have waited."
"And by the next time something comes along, you won't remember saying that and you'll do the same thing again." Ianto smiled and stood up. "It's fine, Jack. You do what you need to." He bought his other hand up to the back of Jack's neck, reeled him in for a fierce kiss. "Thank you. Now come on. I need either sleep or coffee and I don't think it'll help calm Gwen down if I take the opportunity to doze off now."
Just the act of making coffee was calming. By the time he'd tidied away, wiped up the stray grounds that always seemed to escape and put the mugs on a tray to take out to the main hub he was feeling back in control again. The worst was over. Gwen, not surprisingly, was angry but she did genuinely seem prepared to accept that he wasn't to blame. Jack was up and clearly no worse for wear. Hart had buggered off out of the way somewhere. Could have been a lot worse.
He handed two of the mugs to Jack, placing his own down by his computer. "Right," he said briskly. "You take this down to Gwen and sit in on the interview. The sight of you should put him plenty off balance. I'll see if the CCTV searches I set going before we left have turned up anything. Looks like the original investigation never found the actual murder scene so we might get lucky."
Twenty minutes later, they were back in the conference room, comparing notes.
"Well," started Gwen, "Nick's story is basically the same as yours except that in his version you had the knife. He also claims to still have the knife, which he says has your prints and Laura's blood on it."
Ianto's eyebrows shot up. "I never handled the knife. I'm sure."
"Just as well. Jack's lie detector confirms your story and denies his but is obviously not admissible as evidence. Also, if I've interpreted the flashing lights correctly, he does have a knife as described but it's not the one used for the murder. The problem will be proving that. What we need is a little bit of positive evidence against him." She sighed, looking frustrated.
"Unfortunately, that may be a little hard to come by," Ianto said. "I checked the CCTV from the warehouse but the van is parked just out of range. You can see both Nick and myself in shot at various times and you see SPC Barrett arrive but the actual thing happens off camera, which makes it pretty useless."
"Damn it!" Gwen exploded. "I refuse to just let him off with this! We can't even get him charged with the drug stuff if he's just going to accuse you over the murder." She swung angrily to face Jack, who was sitting back watching silently. "What are we going to do about this. There must be something!"
"There is. Not as righteous and open as a trial, but if you want him locked up, it can be done."
Gwen stared. "Well, let's hear it. How?"
"We hand him over to UNIT," Jack said grimly.
"What?" Gwen asked. "UNIT don't incarcerate people, do they? And they're not going to be interested in the death of a police officer."
"No," said Ianto slowly, "but they might well be interested in misuse of an alien artifact for criminal purposes."
"Exactly," said Jack. "UNIT do lock people up, Gwen, and when they do, you don't hear from them afterwards."
Gwen looked doubtful for a moment, her police instincts at war with her Torchwood ones. Ianto watched as her Torchwood training took the ascendancy. "Worse than regular prison?"
"For a cop killer?" Jack considered it. "No, I don't think so. Bit more solitary than your regular jail, less chance of having to share a bed all the time. No appeals process."
There was a long moment of silence as they all looked at each other. Finally Gwen broke it. "Alright, that's what we'll do. Call them up."
"You're playing the judge and jury here, Gwen," Jack said seriously. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she said after a moment. "I'm sure, Jack. Laura was my friend and I won't let her killer walk away."
"Ianto?" Jack asked, turning to face him.
Ianto swallowed, trying to think, to be fair, reasonable. After a moment he said "About what happened, yes, I'm sure. About the punishment, I don't want a say."
"Fine," said Jack. "Two yea, one abstention. I'll call and they'll pick him up in the morning. It's been a long night. Go get some sleep."
Ianto lingered in the Hub as Gwen got herself ready to go, tidying up the various papers that littered their desks, shutting down his own equipment for the night. She turned towards him as she was about to leave, looking infinitely exhausted by the events of the day and then the night. "I should charge you with perversion of the course of justice," she said, tone flat. "Look, Ianto, I know it can be difficult when someone you care about is involved, but did you ever think about the people who cared about Laura? About how difficult it was for us knowing that someone we cared about was dead and having no explanation. No reason. Knowing that her killer was out there somewhere and never knowing who."
He didn't know how to say that he hadn't. That his mind had been filled with himself and Nick and how someone he'd loved and admired had turned into something terrifying that he didn't recognise and he'd run and hidden himself away from it. That the next time it happened he'd actually thought to himself that staying and fighting was personal growth of a sort. The silence stretched and he tried to think of what response he could give that would bridge the gap between them. "I was very young, Gwen. I'm sorry," he tried, softly. "And then after, I didn't want you to know. I thought you'd despise me."
Her face softened slightly and she turned towards the door. "I see," she replied with a sigh. "Sleep well, Ianto." He watched her retreating back until the wheel closed behind her.
Looking up at the office; he could see Jack, phone to his ear, presumably making arrangements. He walked down to the cell block propped himself up in front of the perspex wall of Nick's cell. Waited.
It didn't take long for Nick to notice. He surged to his feet when he saw Ianto, looking for a minute like he was going to yell or rush the door but he contented himself with spitting contemptuously at the ground.
"I see your manners haven't improved," Ianto said lightly.
"I told them all about what you did," Nick said venomously. "All the details."
"I know," Ianto said calmly. "They didn't believe you." Nick glared at him. "You should have kept your mouth shut. I didn't want to tell that story but now I've had to and you're going to regret that."
"You've no evidence," Nick retorted, but the edge of his self assurance was decaying.
"I don't need any." Ianto shook his head slightly. "Why do it, Nick? I wouldn't have said anything."
"Bollocks," Nick snarled. "You might not have thought about it since you fucked off last time but once you'd started again you'd have found the guts eventually." He smiled grimly.
Ianto tried to think of what to say. He'd wanted to say goodbye, even apologise but it was obvious that wasn't going to happen. He tried to remember if Nick had been like this when they'd been together, if the viciousness had been implicit all along or if the perceived betrayal, Ianto's abandonment, had turned him sour. He couldn't decide.
Turning to leave, he almost collided with Hart coming down the corridor. "I thought you'd gone sightseeing," he said, surprised and trying to contain his annoyance.
"This is Cardiff," Hart sneered. "Not a lot of sights worth seeing. Thought I'd make myself useful, find out where they got the Reliquary from."
Ianto took in his expression and surmised that 'finding out' was unlikely to involve just asking. "They've got to be in reasonable condition to move tomorrow. Jack's handing them over to UNIT."
"Gwen told me - I bumped into her on the way out and she poured her pretty little heart out. How'd you think I got in? Lucky your dashing Captain dragged himself off his sickbed in time, eh." Hart's gaze sharpened as Ianto tried to control his expression. "She'll get over it, eye-candy," he smiled, reaching out to pat Ianto's cheek; Ianto jerked back out of reach. "You go make yourself comfortable with Jack. I'll keep your old flame company."
"No, I don't think so," Ianto said, with a flicker of a smile. "He's done wrong but no-one is that bad. Go steal a car and head back to London."
Hart pouted. "I don't even get to stay the night?"
"No!" Ianto exclaimed. "Just go before I chase you off the premises!"
"Fine!" Hart complained, throwing his hands up in the air. "Pull your arses out of the fire, break off my extremely pleasant evening with several perfectly agreeable young people purely as a favour to you and what do I get! No, don't worry, I'm going! Give Jack my regards."
"I will," Ianto said, tone softening slightly. "Now bugger off." He followed Captain John back up and watched him until the door was firmly closed behind him before heading off to find Jack.
When he got upstairs to the office, Jack had a whiskey waiting for him. Ianto wondered how much of what he hadn't said while telling his story Jack had heard anyway. From the look on his face, quite a lot, Ianto mused. He sat down and stared at the whiskey for so long that Jack misinterpreted, came over and took a sip himself. "It's safe, no Retcon or anything."
Ianto smiled up at him. "I hadn't thought that. I was just... thinking over the day."
"I've done worse in my time," Jack told him, "much worse."
"And would you tell me about it?" Ianto asked softly.
"No," Jack replied firmly, raising his own whiskey glass and Ianto heard it not as a denial but as a promise. "Would you ask?"
Ianto raised his own drink and took a long sip, relishing the burn as it slid down his throat, and answered in kind. "No."
"You'll stay here tonight?" Jack asked, gesturing with a nod of his head to his quarters below.
Ianto savoured another sip of whiskey and swallowed. "Of course."
Fandom: Torchwood
Summary: An unwelcome blast from Ianto's past turns up in connection with Torchwood's latest investigation.
Rating/Warnings: Gen, team, implied pairings as canon. Jack!death.
Notes: So, this is my first attempt at coming up with my own Torchwood plot. I was fascinated by the description of Ianto's history from Fragments - it was so unlike how I had imagined it so I decided to try to build a story where a little more is revealed. This pushes him even more towards the bad boy side of the tracks than Fragments, but it is basically consistent with what Jack said there if you assume that he just didn't get caught much.
"So, Gwen, any connection between our bums yet?" Jack asked with a grin, breezing down the stairs from his office to where Gwen was fiddling around on her computer with the results of the various scans she'd been doing.
"We call them tramps here, Jack, thank you, and no, nothing yet. Except that I still can't make some of the scanners work. They just keep coming up blank." She stared at her screen in frustration. "I've been over Owen's notes again and again and they should be working, but I can't get any results."
"Hmmm," mused Jack. "Interesting. Let me have a look."
Ianto smiled internally and went back to trying to coax the mainframe into giving him access to some of the private CCTV cameras. At least Owen left notes, he thought wryly. Tosh could really have commented some of this code a little more. He almost immediately felt guilty for thinking it. He could just see Tosh now, typing at top speed, probably still finding even that too slow to get all the ideas out of her head and into the programme.
He didn't think Gwen was likely to find anything genuinely out of the ordinary between the homeless people who'd been turning up dead recently. The sudden upswing in the numbers and odd patterns of wounds on the bodies - punctures in the neck, skull and heart - had prompted DI Swanson to get in touch with them but in all honesty, it was junkies getting behind on their payments and falling foul of an unusually psychotic dealer - they were all in the area for it and the chemical tests showed traces of crack in the hair. Still, things had been quiet recently and he was glad Jack had let Gwen pursue it - it was the most involved in work he'd seen her since Gray and at least it was getting her to practice with the equipment. They were still muddling along with just the three of them, none of them feeling quite up to the idea of actually looking for replacements yet.
He tried to concentrate on piecing together exactly how the logic of the CCTV code was supposed to work and currently wasn't in the case of the new shopping centre. He was just starting to get into it when Jack slipped up behind him and completely derailed his train of thought by leaning in and kissing him on the back of the neck. Still, it was time he was taking a break anyway, he thought, and twisted around to find Jack up in his personal space as usual. "Coffee?" he asked with a smile; it always amused him to tease Jack in the office. Jack grinned. "Well, if that's what's on offer, that'll do. Bring it down to the medical bay - Gwen and I are going to have another shot at some of those scans."
By the time the beans had been ground, the brew percolated, adulterants added and Ianto had made it to the medical bay, Jack and Gwen were all set up, heads bent over the latest corpse to be passed their way. Gwen's face was screwed up in an expression of intense concentration as she ran the scanner over the body, twisting the various dials and trying to get a response. Eventually she thrust it at Jack, annoyance plain, and said "You try! I can't get it to work at all!"
Jack turned it over in his hands. "We're sure this is supposed to work on dead people, yes?"
"I got Ianto to dig up the archive notes and he says yes," Gwen replied doubtfully. "Indeed," Ianto contributed, coming down the steps and passing out the coffees. "The notes say you should be able to use it to detect masses, like a mini MRI scanner. Owen used to use it to do a basic organ check on the ones that looked human to make sure they looked human all the way through. Apparently, it gets less effective after a while, but you should be able to use it on the recently dead."
"And this one was only brought in yesterday," Gwen pointed out, "and not dead more than 24 hours before that, according to the report."
Jack flipped the switches the notes said should turn the scanner on and tried a couple of passes over the old man with no better luck. He shrugged and was just in the process of passing it over to Ianto to see if he could make anything of it when it suddenly beeped and started to show something. They all jumped in surprise but as soon as Jack turned it back towards the body, nothing again. He pivoted back towards Ianto, and got more beeping. "I forgot to turn it off," he said, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, thanks Jack!" Ianto said, "Perhaps you could pass the probably malfunctioning alien tech to someone who'll pay a bit more attention?"
"No, it's not malfunctioning, though, is it?" Jack said and reached his hand under the sensor area. Immediately, lights began to flash and a picture to solidify. He moved his hand away again. Silence. They all looked at each other.
"What else have you tried this on, Gwen," Ianto asked after a second. "Just the other two of these we had in last week, I think," she replied. "There hasn't been much that's needed examination recently - we already know what weevils look like inside."
"Hmmm, do we have any other corpses we can test on?" Jack asked. "It might have a dead person button that we haven't hit yet."
Only at Torchwood, Ianto thought, trying to think through the last few days of activity. Most things were either already incinerated or returned to their relatives or the city for burial with cover story attached but there was a victim of weevil attack earlier in the week that hadn't yet been identified and was therefore still safely stored in the morgue. He sighed, trying not to get depressed at the thought of the sheer number of bodies which seemed to pass through Torchwood, both human and otherwise, and motioned the other two over to the appropriate drawer.
Jack opened it up and passed the scanner carefully over the body inside. After only a second, it started to flash its lights and show images of the girl's internal organs. Jack shut it off again and they all looked at each other. "Well," Ianto said, breaking the silence, "It doesn't have a dead person button."
Gwen made a face. "No it doesn't, which means that something else is going on - I told you! Come on, let's see if we can correlate it with rift activity."
Ianto frowned, watching the road. Five weevils had been a bit more of a workout than he'd been hoping for that evening. They still hadn't come up with anything to connect their dead down and outs other than the area they'd been found in and he'd had to leave his trawl for information about that in progress on his computer while he joined the others for a bag and tag operation. He checked on Gwen in the rear view mirror; she was pale but looking alert. She insisted her arm wouldn't need stitches and he was not keen on the idea of forcing her down to A&E for them anyway. They really were going to have to face up to this recruitment thing, he thought morosely.
"Hey, Ianto," said Jack tightly, breaking the silence. Ianto glanced over to see Jack fidgeting in his seat; not a good sign. "Yes?" he responded cautiously. "Isn't this the edge of our mystery area coming up on the left?" Jack asked. "From Cape Street down towards the docks," Ianto admitted. "Drop me off," ordered Jack, "I'm going to have a look around."
Ianto considered arguing the point but Jack was doing this more and more lately. He just didn't like to be still anymore and seemed to be finding even the Hub claustrophobic at times. At least there weren't likely to be any other weevils up and around in this area of town tonight. He pulled over. "OK, but keep your comms open," he said. "If you go off line, I'm coming back to get you."
"I'll be fine," smiled Jack, happy now he'd got his way as usual. Ianto glared at him and he added, "OK! I promise. Comms open. Let me know what the analysis says when you get back, yeah?" He hopped out of the car and Ianto and Gwen exchanged glances in the mirror. "Not a problem," Ianto said with a small smile. "See you back at base."
"Yeah, later," replied Jack vaguely and headed off briskly into the dark streets.
"Too much time in the deep freeze," Gwen said briskly and smiled at Ianto with her mouth only. "He'll be fine again before you know it." Ianto didn't reply, just put the SUV back into gear and pushed the speed limit all the way back to the Hub.
They pulled up and emptied the SUV of its comatose load, carting the weevils down to the cells to await chemical castration before being released, their aggression dormant. That done, he turned to Gwen and said "You should go home to Rhys."
"Oh no," she said firmly, "I'm going to patch up my arm and then I'll stay here. Just in case." In case of what he wanted to ask, but why else was he doing the same thing, after all, so he let it pass. "Fine," he said, "I'll go check on Jack and then make us some coffees." She smiled at him, clearly hoping to reassure, and headed off to the medical bay for tape and sterile dressings while he addressed his computer.
It took him a few moments to get the tracker programme working but then there was Jack, green light indicating an open channel, as promised. He hadn't actually made it far from where they'd dropped him off, probably been nosing around inside buildings or something - there were a lot of empty warehouses around there, some of them quite derelict. He keyed his own headset to check in. "Jack," he said softly, "anything unusual?"
"All quiet on the Western Front," came Jack's voice out of the speakers, quiet but sounding cheerful. "What did the searches dig up on the area?"
"Just checking it out now," Ianto responded, switching windows. "Looks like the area you're in now is all empty units - no rental agreements, council tax payments, electricity hookups showing up. Could be squatters though. Further east, there's some occupied ones, mostly storing retail goods in transit by the look of it."
"Okay, track back the details of the occupied ones, see if there's anything interesting about the occupiers. I'll see if I can find any squatters who might have seen something." Ianto made the coffees for Gwen and himself and then settled down to see what he could find out about the used buildings in the area. He'd reached a point of being quite relaxed, working away on the question, listening to the various night-time sounds drifting back to them from Jack's open comms link, when Jack suddenly hissed "Hey, Ianto!"
"Jack?" he responded, instinctively lowering his own voice as he replied. "Who's the occupier of the building around the corner from me?" Jack asked quietly. Ianto pulled up the map and cross referenced his earlier results. "No-one, sir. It's another two cross streets in that direction before you get to the in-use ones."
"Interesting," came Jack's whispered drawl, "because someone has left the lights on." Ianto raised his eyebrow and double checked his results from earlier. "They're not connected to the mains, sir," he confirmed. "Could be a generator?"
"Damn quiet if it is," Jack replied. "I'm going to take a look."
"Jack, you should come back here and see what else we can find out, or at least wait for some backup," Ianto said, trying to sound firm, and not worried. "Nonsense. I'll be fine," Jack said, doing a rather better job, "I'll just have a very quiet look around, make sure there aren't any other luckless victims in the area."
"Jack," Ianto started to protest. "Radio silence," Jack cut him off. Ianto subsided, watching his screen and trying not to fret as Jack started to move around the building. At least he'd left the comms open, he thought, listening to Jack's barely vocalised curses as the doors he tried proved to be securely locked. Ianto was just starting to think that Jack would have to come back to base anyway, when he heard the click of a latch and Jack's whispered "Gotcha!" before his GPS tracker dot moved inside the building.
Gwen came back up from the medical bay and Ianto quietly filled her in on what was going on. She rolled her eyes but offered no other comment, heading over to her own station to follow events from there. When Jack finally spoke again, they both jumped. "Well it's not a generator," he said quietly, "because I'm looking at the generator and it's not even connected."
"Could be an old one, kept for spares," Gwen suggested. "Not a spot of rust on it," Jack replied. "Looks new, in fact. Curiouser and curiouser. I'm going to see what else I can find - I though I heard some movement a minute ago."
"Jack, you should wait for backup," Ianto protested uselessly. "I won't get close," Jack promised quietly, "just try to get a look and see what we're up against."
They heard the door open again, and Jack move out into the corridor again and then...
CRACK
The sound of a gunshot.
"Shit!" Gwen said, sharply. Jack's comms channel was still open and they could hear at least two pairs of feet jogging closer, and then a voice.
"Well, what have we here?" Ianto froze. Where did he know that voice from? There was a fumbling noise and then the voice came back, much clearer. He must have taken Jack's headset, Ianto realised. "Or should I say, who do we have here?" it asked. Suddenly it hit him. "Nick?" he asked, unbelieving.
There was a silence. Then, "Ianto Jones. Long time, no postcards, boyo. Who's your friend."
"We're just working a private security gig together," Ianto lied. "Leave him, I'll pick him up."
"Oh no, he may be dead and gone, but he's still useful," Nick chuckled.
"What the hell are you on about," Ianto snapped, just hoping Jack wouldn't wake up while this conversation was going on.
"Never you mind. We're plenty secure around here. You just keep your distance. You're good at that." Nick sneered and the link went dead.
Ianto wanted to break something, but he settled for putting his head in his hands for a minute and taking a few deep breaths. Nick. That was bad news on its own without him apparently having plans for Jack's currently lifeless body.
"So," asked Gwen after a moment. "Old friend?"
And then some, he thought but out loud replied "You could say that."
"He didn't sound overjoyed to hear from you again," Gwen observed curiously.
"No. We didn't part on very good terms," Ianto admitted, and, realising he really didn't want to talk about what those terms had been, added "It was a bad breakup."
"Ianto Jones!" she exclaimed, diverted as he'd known she would be. "Are you telling me that what we have here is Jack in the clutches of your psycho ex boyfriend?"
"Why, Gwen," he teased, amused at her obvious surprise at the revelation, "did you think I was only gay for Jack?"
She blushed and turned back to her computer. A hit, he thought wryly. A very palpable hit. "Yes, well," she said after a second to gather her wits. "I'll have you know that all my ex boyfriends are perfect gentlemen."
Time to get back to business, he thought. "The question is what on earth is Nick into." His heart sank a little as he thought about possible answers to that question. "He always had an eye to the main chance. If he got hold of something from the Rift I'm sure he'd find something dubious to use it for."
"Hmmm. Surname?" asked Gwen.
"Moralis." Ianto supplied.
"Right." She poked around on the computer for a few minutes. "Quite a few arrests and a lot more notes about suspicious activity. Dropped off the radar for a few months at the start of the year and recently seems to be getting into the crack business." She frowned. "Coming from they know not where. Police have been holding off in the hopes of tracing it back up the chain."
He thought about it. "That would fit. Nick always thought dealing would give him a bit of status, cash to flash but he was too mouthy to get in with any of the guys and work his way up. If he found something he could use to take a shortcut he'd be all over it."
Gwen sighed. "Well, whatever it is, you're going to have to go and find out and I'm not going to be able to come with you." She gestured to her arm, which was fairly heavily bandage wrapped. "I'm not going to manage any sort of recoil with this. Which means that we need a helping hand." He stared at her, momentarily at a loss before the light dawned. "Oh no! We don't need to make this any worse than it already is, thank you very much!"
"We need another pair of hands, one that can shoot straight, and you've got to admit it's got nice symmetry to it," she smiled.
"Gwen, our ex boyfriends do not annihilate like matter and anti-matter. They're more likely to get together and double our problems - Nick must be into something out of the common way and you know what Hart is like."
"He won't go against Jack," Gwen pointed out firmly.
Ianto wanted to protest further but she was probably right about that and she was definitely right that he shouldn't go in alone if it could be avoided. "Fine," he said, giving in, "but I'm going to be the one to ring him."
He switched the scanner over to look for the mobile phone they'd given Hart, perversely hoping he'd find the other man somewhere well out of the way, across an ocean perhaps, but no, he was in London. Typical. He dialled the number.
"Eye-candy!" came the expansive voice over the phone. Too cheerful by half, Ianto thought. "Hart," he replied. "We need your help. How soon can you be down here?"
"Love to, but I'm a bit tied up at the minute," Hart leered down the line.
"Untangle yourself," Ianto replied firmly.
"Now now, wait your turn, eye-candy. Get your blue eyed boy to handle it."
"Believe me, I wish I could. Listen," Ianto said and gave him an outline of the evening's events.
"Well, well!" said Hart speculatively when he'd finished. "Who would have thought you had it in you, eye-candy? I'll be with you in a couple of hours."
Ianto looked at the map and tried not to think about how fast John would therefore be driving. "He's on his way," he told Gwen. "Now we just have to figure out what we're going to do when he gets here.
Half an hour before Hart was due to show, Ianto's comms chimed. He looked at his screen in confusion and saw that Jack's channel had gone green again, still located in the same building as before. "Jack?" he murmured cautiously.
"Yan," came a familiar voice through his headset, but not the one he'd been hoping for. His heart sank again. "Nick," he replied tightly. "Can I help."
"Just a friendly warning, Yan. Whoever you're working for, keep your fucking nose out."
"We're just keeping an eye on things for Chandlers," Ianto said, randomly naming one of the companies with a unit close by. "Jack just got bored and went wandering. Long night shift."
"Webleys standard issue to private security grunts these days, are they?" Nick retorted with sarcasm. "You can tell your boss, who ever that is, that I'm sharing my supply with no one. And as for you, it's not in your interest to get me into trouble, see." Ianto's throat tightened and he flipped the switch to take the conversation off the speakers should Gwen be finished in the weapons locker before it was done.
"You've nothing left from that," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "Just leave it, Nick."
"Want to bet?" Nick's reply came back taunting and confident. "After you did a runner? I went back and picked up some insurance. You head back down what ever rabbit hole you've been hiding and leave well alone." The line went dead and Ianto had to resist the impulse to put his fist through the screen in frustration. Instead, he tried to think about it rationally. Nick hadn't bought their cover story, but that wasn't a problem as he seemed to have come up with one for himself.
What was going to be a problem was that he thought he had some evidence against Ianto. Ianto couldn't imagine him being very good at fabricating evidence but even so, better to be prepared. He turned to his computer and fired up the police case history database.
"Right," Gwen said softly, concentrating on the computer screen they'd shifted forward to the front of the SUV for her. "We couldn't find any floor plans, so I can't give you rooms but I'm getting three heat signals. Two of them are together towards the middle of the building and the other one is somewhere in the back left."
"Very useful, love," Hart sneered. "So either one of them's with Jack or he's on his own. Never would have figured that out without your help." He made to open his door.
"Yes, well, at least you know how many to expect," Gwen replied tartly. "If anyone else enters the building or they start moving around I'll let you know. If you're coming out in a rush call me so I can start her up. And don't bloody shoot them - we still need to know what the hell they've been doing."
"Take all the fun out of it, why don't you," said Hart with an eye roll and stepped out. Ianto followed and said to Hart "I'm going to see if there's another entrance. Wait here until I signal." Hart grinned wolfishly and hefted his gun and Ianto gave him a hard look before starting around the side of the building. "Don't fuck this up." he said quietly into his comms as he left and heard Hart's answering snort.
Around the back there was indeed another entrance and Ianto could see light filtering out from the windows and around the edge of the door. "I'm in position," he said into the comms, attaching the unlocking device he'd bought from the hub to the door as he talked. "Gwen, how close am I to the person in the back half of the building?"
"Fairly," she replied. "Start checking doors and turnings on your right pretty much as soon as you get in."
"Leaving me with the other two," Hart broke in. "Let's do this thing, Jones." The door gave a click as he said it and Ianto quickly pocketed the unlocker and readied his gun. "Ready. Go."
Once inside, he found he didn't particularly need to worry about making a wrong turn because the corridor up ahead on the right was clearly brighter than the one he was in. He headed up it, ears pricked for any sounds of movement but he could only hear a steady buzzing hum and an occasional clatter. About 200 metres up were a pair of closed double doors from which both the noise and the light appeared to be coming. He listened but couldn't hear anything new. "Gwen?" he whispered on his comms.
"You're almost on top of the heat signature in your part of the building," her voice said quietly in his ear.
"Here goes," he muttered and opened the door.
Without the solidity of a fire door in the way, his Rift sensor began to go off in the pocket of his trousers almost immediately. In front of him, and the source of all the humming and the light was a large white and steel machine covered in lights and control panels. It had several orifices, and out of one a small but steady flow of white powder was emptying into a bucket. Nick's supply, he thought grimly. He moved cautiously around the side of the contraption to get a look at the rest of the room, and then stopped dead, staring horrified for a moment before pulling himself together and keying his comms. "Hart," he said quietly, "get over here. I've found Jack."
It was Gwen, not Hart, that responded. "I think he's engaged the others, Ianto. Can you hold on?"
Not for long, he thought, looking at the scene before him. Jack was lying on what appeared to be an operating table, straps across his torso and legs holding him in place. Around his neck was some sort of collar with protruding wires which looked like it was supporting shunts into his spinal column. It also served as an anchor for a sort of metallic headband which held shunts pushed directly into Jack's head, presumably contacting his brain. A further set drilled into his chest at more or less the right position for the heart. There was surprisingly little blood, but Ianto still wanted to vomit. Jack's body was twitching arrhythmically, as if he was fitting. His eyes were open, rolled up so that almost none of the iris could be seen, and seemed to be flickering from side to side. All the shunts connected via what looked like electrical cabling to the glowing machine. Ianto forced himself to move over to the table and check. Thready pulse, weak but definitely there. Oh god.
"Right." Harts voice came over his ear piece, far to loud, too brash. "Assuming this was a two man operation, we're dandy."
"You've got them secure?" Ianto asked quietly.
"Yup. One unconscious and one pissing himself," Hart affirmed.
"Bring them over here," Ianto said flatly.
"Hey, I didn't sign up to this for manual labour," Hart started, but Ianto overrode him.
"Then get your prisoner to do it. Just bring them."
Hart must have heard the warning in Ianto's voice because he didn't complain any further and it was less than a minute before Ianto could hear the sounds of movement in the passage he'd come in through. Grateful for the excuse, he stepped away from Jack to cover the door as it was pushed open by a stocky dark haired man leaning down to drag another through with him. A quick glance at the downed man confirmed that he was Nick, looking almost the same as he had those years ago, lines of anger or age smoothed out in the slackness of unconsciousness. Ianto transferred his attention back up to the other man, who did indeed look terrified. As soon as he had Nick clear of the door he backed away from Ianto and the machine to the wall. After swallowing convulsively for a few moments, he whispered "Just take it and go, man. I swear you'll never hear from us again."
Hart swaggered in behind them, took one look at the machine and stopped dead. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed, and spun around to confront their prisoner. "Where the hell did you get that?"
"It's Nick's," he managed to get out after a second. "I don't know, I swear."
"You must have got it working for him though," Ianto snapped. "Nick never was any good with machines." The kid just nodded. If it wasn't for Jack lying there on the table, Ianto would have felt almost sorry for him.
"Bodge job," said Hart, dismissively. "You think they're supposed to glow like that? Bloody wasteful."
"Whatever," Ianto replied impatiently. "Just turn it off." Nick was already stirring on the ground and he just wanted to get out of there before anything happened to mess things up.
"Temper, temper," Hart said absently as he circled the machine. "Mess this is in, I'm surprised it's working at all. Any sudden moves and we might all not live to regret it, if you know what I mean." Ianto stared along the barrel of his gun to where Nick was scrambling to his feet and thought very carefully about just shooting him and claiming he'd resisted. Unfortunately, while Hart was bound to be persuadable to keep quiet, Ianto doubted his price would be low. And of course there would be the little matter of his conscience. Plus Jack wouldn't have approved. Damn it.
As Hart circled the machine muttering to himself, Nick finally stood up and gave Ianto a death glare. No change there then, he thought, and fought down the insane urge to giggle. To keep his mind off Jack on the table behind him, he said "I see you replaced me then. Could do with a bit more backbone, perhaps."
"Fuck off." Nick said succinctly and closed his mouth with a snap.
"Name?" Ianto asked the other man pleasantly.
"Tim," he replied softly. Nick transferred the death glare briefly before switching back to Ianto.
"So, Tim, are you an accessory here or just an idiot?" Ianto asked politely. "And you, stand still and shut up," he added as Nick looked like he was going to step closer and actually deck Tim to keep him quiet. Tim looked horrified. He swallowed hard a couple of times and then said "I swear they were all dead already, we just hooked them up after, honest. It doesn't seem to work any other way - I tried powering it off the generator but that just sent sparks everywhere."
"Bit of both then. Even crack addicts don't die at that rate. I expect they were behind with their payments so Nick gave them a little something on account and collected the bodies in the morning."
Tim looked like he was going to be sick. "I don't know," he whispered.
"And tonight?" Ianto asked inexorably.
"He took us by surprise. I never heard anything but there he was in the corridor." Tim stared at the ground. "I didn't know Nick had a gun." Ianto stared at him for a long moment before transferring his gaze to Nick, who was still trying to stare him down.
"No, that I can believe," he said. "Hart, get the hell on with it."
"Patience, eye candy! Just gotta dial this down a bit, and then..." the humming rapidly downshifted in pitch, seemed to stabilize for a moment and then cut out. "There!" Hart exclaimed triumphantly. A second later, the glow too disappeared, leaving the room in near darkness, lit only by the streetlights filtering through the inexpertly boarded windows.
As soon as it did, Nick jumped for the gun. Fortunately, that was so predictable that Ianto was fully braced for it. He swung to one side and grabbed Nick as he went past, pushing him over and landing on top of him hard enough to wind him. He grabbed Nick's arms into a lock and knelt on him, panting "Bloody well give over, Nick. You are done, OK."
"Nice moves, eye-candy!" came Hart's voice. "I've got the other one. Bring any restraints?"
"Must you make everything sound like an innuendo?" Ianto asked exasperated. "And yes I did. Right pocket of my jacket." He felt Hart reach in and separate out one of the pairs of cuffs. "Do yours and then cover Nick while I cuff him."
Once the two captives were safely restrained, Ianto dug his torch out of his other pocket and reluctantly turned it towards the operating table. "Now," he said, "lets get that stuff off him before he wakes up." It was a struggle to get the shunts out - it looked like the wounds had started to close up around them and by the time they were done, there was rather more blood all around the place. Even detached, Jack continued to twitch gently, showing almost no change in his state. Checking again, Ianto found the pulse thready but still there. "What's it done to him?" he asked softly.
"Mind wipe, probably," Hart said, even his normally cheerful voice a little subdued. "It's a Metavital Reliquary; drains the body's electrical and psychic energy to create objects. It's supposed to be for creating, like, memorial objects using the energy left after you die. No electricity, no brain."
Ianto turned on his heel, leaving Hart staring thoughtfully at the body on the table, and stalked over to Nick, dragging him up to eye level with a fist knotted in the front of his jacket. "If you've permanently damaged him with that thing," he started.
Nick spat at him. "For fuck's sake, Ianto. He's been dead for hours, which you already knew when you came here. What the fuck are you on." This didn't deserve a reply but Ianto was seriously considering just punching his lights out when for the second time this evening he heard the CRACK of a gunshot echoing around the room and this time a lot closer up. He dropped Nick and spun around, grabbing for his own gun, wondering why Gwen hadn't warned them about whoever had turned up now.
"Relax, eye-candy," Hart said nonchalantly, pocketing his pistol. Ianto gaped at him and then at the table where, after a second of being too shocked to process, he realised that Hart had just shot Jack in the head. Almost reflexively he raised his revolver to aim at Hart's chest. Hart spread his arms wide in a gesture of injured innocence and protested "Come on, Jones! He needed a reboot. How long does this usually take anyway?"
"It varies," Ianto replied numbly, forcing himself to lower and re-holster his gun again.
"Fine," Hart said irritably. "You stay here and nursemaid. The lovely PC and I will do the leg work." He hit his comms. "Ms Cooper?"
"John!" her voice came back over the ether almost immediately. "Everything under control?"
"Surely is, love. Two idiots here waiting to be taken into your custody. Oh, and we caught Ianto's old flame and his mate too." Gwen laughed. "I'll bring the SUV around the back," she replied.
Jack still hadn't revived by the time they got back to the Hub. Gwen gave him a worried look and then dragged John with her to get their two prisoners situated and arrange with the local police to have the warehouse watched until they could collect the Reliquary. Ianto paid scant attention to all of this, just carried Jack's body to the medical area where he cleaned it meticulously and changed it into clean clothes before grabbing a stool and settling down to wait.
He was still waiting two hours later when Gwen came to find him. If he'd been less preoccupied or less sleep deprived he would have been forewarned by the stormy look on her face. As it was he hardly noticed her coming in, his focus narrowed until little but Jack's lifeless body was visible. It was like watching a plant grow, he thought vaguely, staring and staring, searching for signs of change.
"Ianto," Gwen said, voice hard, "I need a word in the conference room, please."
He looked up at her, startled. "Can't it wait until..." he asked, gesturing vaguely at Jack's body.
"No. Now."
He stared at her in surprise, trying to think. He would have heard rift alarms from in here if there had been any, surely? And their only other problem was under lock and key. At that thought, light began to dawn fast and he wanted to kick himself for leaving her and Hart to deal with the prisoners, for being so preoccupied with Jack, being determined to be there when he woke up. Now that his brain was working again, he only had to look at her to know she'd been talking to Nick. Or rather Nick had been talking to her.
"Fine," he said tightly. "Just a sec." He scribbled a quick note for Jack on the page of a loose leaf notepad, tore it out and tucked it under his hand.
They marched up to the conference room in silence and sat down on opposite sides of the table, staring at each other. Presumably, Gwen was waiting for him to say something, Ianto thought, perhaps ask what was bothering her, but he had plenty of practice at interviews with police officers. Never start the conversation. It didn't take long before she caved, although her voice was gentler than Ianto had expected when she asked "Look, Ianto, is there anything you want to tell me."
"Not particularly, no," he said shortly, "but I doubt my wishes come into the matter. Can we not at least wait until Jack is up? I'd rather not go over this more than once." She stared at him, her anger and distress warring with her instinct to trust a colleague over a prisoner, not bothering to try to keep her emotions off her face. No wonder she'd been a beat copper rather than a detective, Ianto thought inconsequentially. "And even then it's just going to be Nick's word against mine." And whatever he'd cooked up from the crime scene, Ianto thought grimly. He hadn't even checked on the results of his own searches, too busy watching Jack.
"It doesn't have to be," came Jack's voice from the doorway. They both jumped to their feet, startled, too intent on each other to have heard his approach. "Gwen," he said by way of greeting, giving her a quick hug. "Ianto." He crossed the room and enveloped Ianto in a rather more vigorous one. "Don't worry," he told Ianto quietly, "Whatever it is, it'll be fine. I know you're not a killer." Ianto let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He took Jack's hand briefly and squeezed, saying "Thanks".
"Wait here a moment, kids, I'll be right back," Jack assured them and swept out of the room again. Ianto and Gwen sat down again, looking uncomfortably at each other.
"Where's Hart?" Ianto asked, suddenly realising that he hadn't even thought of, much less seen, the other man since they'd got back to the Hub.
"He said, and I quote, that he was buggered if he was going to wait around here for Jack to sleep it off and where could he go for a little bit of fun in this town," Gwen said with a smile. "I resisted the urge to direct him to the dogs home, don't worry. He's going to check in tomorrow morning before he heads back to London."
"Right," Jack said briskly, marching back into the room with a solid box under his arm. They both watched curiously as he fiddled around getting what looked like a microphone set up and tweaking the settings until he was happy with them. Perhaps he was going to record the interview, Ianto thought vaguely.
Once they were all sat down, Jack turned to Gwen and said "Now we're ready. This is a lie detector; most accurate ever designed, certainly way more accurate than anything else on this planet right now. Obviously, lying is based on belief, so there is still room for people to be wrong about things that this confirms but if we're talking contradicting statements, it should sort out the sheep from the goats. Test it, Gwen. Tell the most plausible lie you can think of."
She glared at him. "Put me on the spot, why don't you! Ummm, OK. I'm very fond of my mother-in-law." The light flashed red.
"I said plausible lie, Gwen," Jack sighed.
"Okay, okay! I first slept with Rhys five months after I started seeing him." Red again.
"Earlier or later?" Jack asked with a grin.
"Earlier, actually, but just the once." Green light. "Okay, that is impressive. I don't think anyone except Rhys and I knows that."
"Excellent," Jack said briskly. "Then let's get on with it. I still know almost nothing about this. Ianto said you thought he killed someone. Why?" He flashed a reassuring smile at Ianto before turning back to focus on Gwen, who was looking considerably less sure of herself than she had been when she'd come storming up from the cells.
"Well, Nick told me that when he and Ianto were dating," Gwen started.
"Whoa, whoa, back up!" Jack exclaimed. "Remember I've been dead for about," he looked at his watch, "five hours apparently. No wonder I have a splitting headache. I need more explanation than that. Start at the beginning."
"Maybe it's better if I tell it, Jack," Ianto suggested, earning him a relieved glance from Gwen. Without waiting for confirmation, he plunged into it, explaining the events of the night succinctly and including the second call from Nick, which had Gwen raising her eyebrows but as the machine stayed green lit throughout she made no demural. As for Jack, he seemed amused if anything, although his eyes lit up when Ianto described the machine he'd been hooked up to.
As Ianto ground to a halt, Jack looked at them both quizzically. "So far, so good, by the sound of it. Perpetrators awaiting interview and Retcon, Reliquary safely stashed, me tucked in upstairs. I still haven't heard any kind of accusation though. Gwen?"
Gwen looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, I was asking Nick about the tramps, how he'd got hold of the bodies, see. He said I shouldn't be so self righteous if I was hanging around with Ianto and he, well, he made some accusations. He claimed that Ianto had been responsible for the murder of Laura Barrett." Ianto shut his eyes. It wasn't exactly unexpected but he'd managed not to think about that night for so long. Just the name stung.
Jack, on the other hand, looked blank. "Who? Doesn't ring a bell?"
"Well, maybe you weren't in Cardiff at the time," Gwen said. "She was a special constable, killed by a stab wound to the heart after coming off shift about 4 years ago. They never found out where or by who."
Jack's expression cleared. "Oh yeah, I remember. It was never out of the papers for weeks."
"It was the brutal unresolved killing of someone just trying to do their bit for their community. Surprisingly, people took an interest," Gwen replied sharply.
"So," Jack said, watching her face thoughtfully, "did he back this up at all? Give any more detail?"
With a look of determination, Gwen replied "Yes, there was more detail, but I'm not going to go into it now."
Jack looked like he was about to protest, but Ianto broke in. "It's fine, Jack. Standard procedure. See what I say before I've heard the full detail of the other story, see where they reinforce, where they contradict." Gwen nodded, looking relieved that Ianto was apparently resigned to it, and Jack subsided. Ianto took a deep breath, trying to decide where to begin. He found he couldn't quite bring himself to look at either of them while he talked, keeping his eyes fixed on the green lights flashing on Jack's lie detector instead.
"As Gwen said, it was about four years ago now. Nick and I were pinching some CDs from a warehouse. I was temping for their cleaning contractors and I'd left the door out the back unfastened. I was arranging the boxes in the van and Nick was going in and carrying the stuff out." He remembered their joking argument about it on the way there, Nick claiming that Ianto should do the carrying because he knew the way, Ianto saying that having to put up with doing the cleaning shifts was quite enough leg work, thanks very much.
"We were nearly done. Nick had dumped a pile of boxes by the van for me to load up and was taking the loading trolley we'd been using back to the factory. I was sorting things out in the van when I heard someone ask Nick if the van was his. He said it wasn't, he was just helping out a friend with a late delivery. She asked if she could speak to the driver." He'd had to stave off the urge to panic, quickly chuck a tarpaulin from the van's daytime incarnation as transport for Nick's decorator brother over the boxes closest to the door before jumping down, thinking they could brazen it out. Too slow.
"I got out to speak to her, but by the time I got there Nick already had a knife out and he'd stuck it in her." There'd been so much blood. She'd made a horrible noise, a kind of wet gasp. No scream. He remembered being surprised by that. Jack's touch on his hand made him physically start; he looked up to see the sympathetic look on Jack's face and returned the grasp before carrying on. "I didn't even know he had one."
"We got the tarps out of the van and wrapped the body up in them. Mopped up most of the blood. The cleaning cupboard was just by that door so we tipped over one of the industrial size bleach containers over the place, made it look like someone had been careless and it'd all run out in that direction under the door. Not a great job, but obviously good enough. Dumped the body in the river. Incinerated the bloody clothes. Went home." Had sex, Nick wild eyed and hyper, fucking into him. He'd been numb, shocked, hadn't been hard but Nick hadn't cared. He ground to a halt, still staring at the lights on the detector.
There was a long silence. Eventually, Gwen said "And you didn't report this? If you'd volunteered yourself as a witness they wouldn't have pressed charges on moving the body, just put it down as not wanting to confront an obviously violent man directly. But you covered it up. Why?"
Ianto frowned, thinking back. His thought processes then seemed so alien now, unconsidered for so many years. "I didn't think anyone would actually believe me." They'd spent so much time lying to the police, dodging them, laughing at them. "I didn't trust the police and they didn't trust me. And Nick was always the smooth talker of the two of us. He would have got it all turned around and me in the dock for it by the end of the day."
Gwen looked skeptical, but let it pass. "And when you came back?" she pressed.
"When I came back I had other things on my mind," Ianto replied shortly and Gwen had the grace to not look down or away, but just nod in recognition.
"So," Jack said, low and angry sounding, "happy now?"
"No, not particularly," Gwen shot back. "I'll need to take that down to the cells and get another statement from Nick and then I am, by God, going to find enough evidence from somewhere to charge Laura's killer." She gathered up the detector and headed out of the conference rooms and across the Hub. Jack and Ianto sat back and stared at each other.
"You OK?" Jack asked after a moment.
Ianto gave the question some honest consideration. Physical state: no damage, tired, running on empty and in need of a cup of coffee. Mental end emotional: churned up, tired, running on empty and in need of a cup of coffee. "I'll be fine. Long day."
"Yeah, I hear that," Jack agreed ruefully. He got up and came around the table to perch next to Ianto, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together.
"Jack," Ianto tried, "I'm sorry about all this." About Nick taking you away and killing you again. About the fact that Gwen is probably going to hate me for months. That I'm not the person you thought I was.
"Leave it," Jack said firmly. "It's all in the past. You would have left it there if you could. I should be apologising; I'm sorry I rushed in tonight. I needed to be moving but you were right, we should have waited."
"And by the next time something comes along, you won't remember saying that and you'll do the same thing again." Ianto smiled and stood up. "It's fine, Jack. You do what you need to." He bought his other hand up to the back of Jack's neck, reeled him in for a fierce kiss. "Thank you. Now come on. I need either sleep or coffee and I don't think it'll help calm Gwen down if I take the opportunity to doze off now."
Just the act of making coffee was calming. By the time he'd tidied away, wiped up the stray grounds that always seemed to escape and put the mugs on a tray to take out to the main hub he was feeling back in control again. The worst was over. Gwen, not surprisingly, was angry but she did genuinely seem prepared to accept that he wasn't to blame. Jack was up and clearly no worse for wear. Hart had buggered off out of the way somewhere. Could have been a lot worse.
He handed two of the mugs to Jack, placing his own down by his computer. "Right," he said briskly. "You take this down to Gwen and sit in on the interview. The sight of you should put him plenty off balance. I'll see if the CCTV searches I set going before we left have turned up anything. Looks like the original investigation never found the actual murder scene so we might get lucky."
Twenty minutes later, they were back in the conference room, comparing notes.
"Well," started Gwen, "Nick's story is basically the same as yours except that in his version you had the knife. He also claims to still have the knife, which he says has your prints and Laura's blood on it."
Ianto's eyebrows shot up. "I never handled the knife. I'm sure."
"Just as well. Jack's lie detector confirms your story and denies his but is obviously not admissible as evidence. Also, if I've interpreted the flashing lights correctly, he does have a knife as described but it's not the one used for the murder. The problem will be proving that. What we need is a little bit of positive evidence against him." She sighed, looking frustrated.
"Unfortunately, that may be a little hard to come by," Ianto said. "I checked the CCTV from the warehouse but the van is parked just out of range. You can see both Nick and myself in shot at various times and you see SPC Barrett arrive but the actual thing happens off camera, which makes it pretty useless."
"Damn it!" Gwen exploded. "I refuse to just let him off with this! We can't even get him charged with the drug stuff if he's just going to accuse you over the murder." She swung angrily to face Jack, who was sitting back watching silently. "What are we going to do about this. There must be something!"
"There is. Not as righteous and open as a trial, but if you want him locked up, it can be done."
Gwen stared. "Well, let's hear it. How?"
"We hand him over to UNIT," Jack said grimly.
"What?" Gwen asked. "UNIT don't incarcerate people, do they? And they're not going to be interested in the death of a police officer."
"No," said Ianto slowly, "but they might well be interested in misuse of an alien artifact for criminal purposes."
"Exactly," said Jack. "UNIT do lock people up, Gwen, and when they do, you don't hear from them afterwards."
Gwen looked doubtful for a moment, her police instincts at war with her Torchwood ones. Ianto watched as her Torchwood training took the ascendancy. "Worse than regular prison?"
"For a cop killer?" Jack considered it. "No, I don't think so. Bit more solitary than your regular jail, less chance of having to share a bed all the time. No appeals process."
There was a long moment of silence as they all looked at each other. Finally Gwen broke it. "Alright, that's what we'll do. Call them up."
"You're playing the judge and jury here, Gwen," Jack said seriously. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she said after a moment. "I'm sure, Jack. Laura was my friend and I won't let her killer walk away."
"Ianto?" Jack asked, turning to face him.
Ianto swallowed, trying to think, to be fair, reasonable. After a moment he said "About what happened, yes, I'm sure. About the punishment, I don't want a say."
"Fine," said Jack. "Two yea, one abstention. I'll call and they'll pick him up in the morning. It's been a long night. Go get some sleep."
Ianto lingered in the Hub as Gwen got herself ready to go, tidying up the various papers that littered their desks, shutting down his own equipment for the night. She turned towards him as she was about to leave, looking infinitely exhausted by the events of the day and then the night. "I should charge you with perversion of the course of justice," she said, tone flat. "Look, Ianto, I know it can be difficult when someone you care about is involved, but did you ever think about the people who cared about Laura? About how difficult it was for us knowing that someone we cared about was dead and having no explanation. No reason. Knowing that her killer was out there somewhere and never knowing who."
He didn't know how to say that he hadn't. That his mind had been filled with himself and Nick and how someone he'd loved and admired had turned into something terrifying that he didn't recognise and he'd run and hidden himself away from it. That the next time it happened he'd actually thought to himself that staying and fighting was personal growth of a sort. The silence stretched and he tried to think of what response he could give that would bridge the gap between them. "I was very young, Gwen. I'm sorry," he tried, softly. "And then after, I didn't want you to know. I thought you'd despise me."
Her face softened slightly and she turned towards the door. "I see," she replied with a sigh. "Sleep well, Ianto." He watched her retreating back until the wheel closed behind her.
Looking up at the office; he could see Jack, phone to his ear, presumably making arrangements. He walked down to the cell block propped himself up in front of the perspex wall of Nick's cell. Waited.
It didn't take long for Nick to notice. He surged to his feet when he saw Ianto, looking for a minute like he was going to yell or rush the door but he contented himself with spitting contemptuously at the ground.
"I see your manners haven't improved," Ianto said lightly.
"I told them all about what you did," Nick said venomously. "All the details."
"I know," Ianto said calmly. "They didn't believe you." Nick glared at him. "You should have kept your mouth shut. I didn't want to tell that story but now I've had to and you're going to regret that."
"You've no evidence," Nick retorted, but the edge of his self assurance was decaying.
"I don't need any." Ianto shook his head slightly. "Why do it, Nick? I wouldn't have said anything."
"Bollocks," Nick snarled. "You might not have thought about it since you fucked off last time but once you'd started again you'd have found the guts eventually." He smiled grimly.
Ianto tried to think of what to say. He'd wanted to say goodbye, even apologise but it was obvious that wasn't going to happen. He tried to remember if Nick had been like this when they'd been together, if the viciousness had been implicit all along or if the perceived betrayal, Ianto's abandonment, had turned him sour. He couldn't decide.
Turning to leave, he almost collided with Hart coming down the corridor. "I thought you'd gone sightseeing," he said, surprised and trying to contain his annoyance.
"This is Cardiff," Hart sneered. "Not a lot of sights worth seeing. Thought I'd make myself useful, find out where they got the Reliquary from."
Ianto took in his expression and surmised that 'finding out' was unlikely to involve just asking. "They've got to be in reasonable condition to move tomorrow. Jack's handing them over to UNIT."
"Gwen told me - I bumped into her on the way out and she poured her pretty little heart out. How'd you think I got in? Lucky your dashing Captain dragged himself off his sickbed in time, eh." Hart's gaze sharpened as Ianto tried to control his expression. "She'll get over it, eye-candy," he smiled, reaching out to pat Ianto's cheek; Ianto jerked back out of reach. "You go make yourself comfortable with Jack. I'll keep your old flame company."
"No, I don't think so," Ianto said, with a flicker of a smile. "He's done wrong but no-one is that bad. Go steal a car and head back to London."
Hart pouted. "I don't even get to stay the night?"
"No!" Ianto exclaimed. "Just go before I chase you off the premises!"
"Fine!" Hart complained, throwing his hands up in the air. "Pull your arses out of the fire, break off my extremely pleasant evening with several perfectly agreeable young people purely as a favour to you and what do I get! No, don't worry, I'm going! Give Jack my regards."
"I will," Ianto said, tone softening slightly. "Now bugger off." He followed Captain John back up and watched him until the door was firmly closed behind him before heading off to find Jack.
When he got upstairs to the office, Jack had a whiskey waiting for him. Ianto wondered how much of what he hadn't said while telling his story Jack had heard anyway. From the look on his face, quite a lot, Ianto mused. He sat down and stared at the whiskey for so long that Jack misinterpreted, came over and took a sip himself. "It's safe, no Retcon or anything."
Ianto smiled up at him. "I hadn't thought that. I was just... thinking over the day."
"I've done worse in my time," Jack told him, "much worse."
"And would you tell me about it?" Ianto asked softly.
"No," Jack replied firmly, raising his own whiskey glass and Ianto heard it not as a denial but as a promise. "Would you ask?"
Ianto raised his own drink and took a long sip, relishing the burn as it slid down his throat, and answered in kind. "No."
"You'll stay here tonight?" Jack asked, gesturing with a nod of his head to his quarters below.
Ianto savoured another sip of whiskey and swallowed. "Of course."
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 04:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 05:33 pm (UTC)"Come on, Jones! He needed a reboot."
I just about died laughing at that!
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From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 08:12 pm (UTC)Like wraithkeeper, I also loved the reboot line. I've seen stories where members of the team are unable to kill Jack even when it makes sense, but this certainly fits John. Where are all the psychopaths when you need them :-)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 08:55 pm (UTC)Just one nit to pick from your Ratings/Warnings: cannons go boom; canon is what you meant.
(no subject)
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Date: 2008-08-04 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-08-18 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-14 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-28 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2024-07-07 09:16 pm (UTC)