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antigwenallies May. 1st, 2014 09:38 pm)
blucougar.livejournal.com posting in antigwenallies May. 1st, 2014 09:38 pm)Title: Adaption
Chapter Seven: Back to the Mainland
Author: blucougar57
Summary: A new rift victim proves to be a revelation to the Torchwood team, and then some.
Rating: T
Warnings: Jack and Ianto have a heart-to-heart; Gwen sticks her beak in again, and Jack threatens to break it off. Well, maybe not, but I’m sure he’s thinking it.
Chapter Seven
The journey back to the mainland from Flat Holm was made mostly in silence. Jason’s grief at the realisation of the permanent separation from his parents had affected both Jack and Ianto deeply, for different reasons.
Standing at the prow of the boat, letting the water spray up into his face, Ianto reflected on how that was something that he and Jack both had in common with Jason. Both men had lost their parents too young, in one way or another. He had lost his mother to mental illness and then eventually to death, and his father… Well, he’d lost his father emotionally even before his mother became ill, so that parent’s death later on had meant nothing other than as a spur to put Ianto onto the path which would lead him to Torchwood and, ultimately, to Jack.
Jack, on the other hand, had lost his father tragically to death during the same alien incursion that had seen his brother Gray taken captive. The loss of his mother had come not with her death, but with her rejection of him over blaming him for failing to protect his little brother.
That, Ianto reflected sadly, was something that still weighed heavily on Jack’s conscience, and would possibly never truly heal. It hadn’t helped that Jack’s reunion with Gray had led the younger man to reinforce Jack’s belief that he was at fault. Ianto had long since learned that he would never be able to stop Jack from believing that. Instead, the best he could do for his lover was to reassure him that it would never affect his feelings for him.
Arms slipped around his waist, and the warm body pressing up against him from behind provided a welcome distraction from the perils of his thoughts.
“I guess you’re probably thinking the same things I am,” Jack murmured into Ianto’s ear. Ianto let his head fall back to rest on Jack’s shoulder.
“Most likely, yes.”
“This could end up causing us a lot of pain.”
It wasn’t a question, and Ianto decided against vocalising a reply. Jack sighed, and the sensation of his breath tickled Ianto’s ear.
“Are we doing the right thing, Ianto?”
At that, Ianto twisted in Jack’s arms so that they were face to face.
“I believe we are. Mind you, I have been known to be mistaken, on occasion.”
Jack smiled at the light tongue-in-cheek comment.
“I like the kid. I don’t know if it’s going to turn out to be a good idea, or a bad one, but I want to see that he’s taken care of. After everything he told us today, I’m more certain than ever that this is what we need to do.”
“You know I’m with you, cariad,” Ianto murmured. “I think Tosh will understand. Owen might not necessarily agree, but I think he’ll understand, too. I don’t know about Gwen…”
Jack huffed in frustration, sounding amusingly like a braying horse. The sound drew a smile from Ianto before he ploughed on.
“She probably won’t agree with it. She’ll likely argue the point with you, in front of all of us, no less… But I don’t think even she will be your biggest challenge. I think the Doctor is going to be that.”
Jack let his breath out in a rush and pulled Ianto fully into his arms for a prolonged cuddle.
“Did I tell you how he reacted when I first told him I was with Torchwood?”
“No,” Ianto said, suddenly curious. He hadn’t been surprised to learn that the Doctor initially despised Torchwood for what had happened at Canary Wharf. He had been surprised that the Time Lord had apparently forgiven the institute enough to rush in to save Owen and Tosh from certain death during Gray’s rampage. No explanation had ever been given, aside from a dismissive ‘all water under the bridge’ remark. Ianto wondered if he was finally going to get that explanation.
“It was during the Saxon incident,” Jack mumbled in Ianto’s shoulder. “We… the Doctor, Martha and I… were holed up in an abandoned warehouse. The Doctor had just told us a story about Time Lord initiations and how they had a tendency to drive some candidates insane, which is what he thinks happened to the Master. An alert came through on my wrist strap, and I had no choice. I had to tell him.”
“I’ll wager he never gave you a chance to explain that you weren’t a willing recruit,” Ianto said dryly. Jack chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound.
“No, he didn’t. In fact, the last time he was that angry at me, it was his previous regeneration, and he’d just made me realise my attempt to con him had put the whole planet at risk.”
“Ouch. Not pleasant.”
“It wasn’t. Of course, then everything went to hell, and it kind of ended up on the backburner. Later, after everything was over, we had another chance to talk, and I told him the whole story, from being stuck on Earth in the 1800s and all about Alice fucking Guppy and Emily fucking Holroyd.”
“They must have been bad,” Ianto said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word before. Not even when we play rough.”
“They tortured me, Ianto. They experimented on me and they tortured me. I tried to get away from them so many times, and every time they managed to track me down and bring me back. It’s kind of disturbing to think that I looked forward to the start of World War I, just to be able to get away from Torchwood for a while.”
Ianto couldn’t quite fathom that. It seemed that Jack must have gone from one hell into another, knowing as he did that Jack had fought in some of the bloodiest and most wretched campaigns of World War I and World War II.
“I would have thought you’d have taken advantage of the distraction, and gone into hiding,” Ianto murmured.
“The idea did occur to me,” Jack admitted. “It was tempting, too. Torchwood was wrapped up in developing advanced weaponry for the war effort, and I lost contact with them for most of the war. The only time they tracked me down was when I was…”
Jack suddenly stopped, his breath catching in his throat. Sensing a titbit of information that had previously remained strictly private, Ianto carded his fingers lovingly through Jack’s hair.
“It’s all right, cariad. You don’t have to tell me anything that you’re not ready to share.”
“It’s just… I’m a little ashamed of it,” Jack admitted miserably. “I want to tell you, but…”
“I won’t think any worse of you,” Ianto promised him. “Whatever it is, I promise you don’t have to be afraid of what I’ll think.”
Jack sighed a little, and spoke.
“They found me in a hospital in Essex. I was shipped back to England and sent there to recover after the Battle of the Somme.”
“You were injured?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I was shipped home. You know me. My injuries had healed well and truly before I was found.”
For a long moment, Ianto was confused. Then, he remembered Tommy Brockless, and realisation struck.
“You were shell-shocked.”
“Yeah,” Jack confirmed softly. “I was shell-shocked. Hard to believe, I know…”
“Jack,” Ianto chided him lightly. “With everything you’ve experienced, I’d be amazed if you hadn’t suffered from shell shock at some point. Everyone has their breaking point, and the Somme was one of the most horrific campaigns of World War I.”
Jack shut his eyes, though Ianto imagined that probably didn’t help him to overcome the power of his own memories.
“I’d fought in battles before. I’d seen terrible things. But during the battle of the Somme, I died more than five hundred times. Five hundred times, Ianto, and each time I had to get back up like nothing had happened, and keep fighting. At first they called me the luckiest bastard on the battlefield but before long they started calling me other things. ‘Jinx’ was the least of them. I was the man who kept getting back up when no one else did. In the end, the men that I was supposed to be fighting alongside were as scared of me as they were of our enemies. Between that, the constant deaths, and seeing so many good men and boys dying while I just kept getting back up…? It was too much. Eventually, I just stopped functioning.
“At first they thought I had an injury that no one had picked up on and I was evacuated and shipped back to England. They sent me to a war hospital in Essex that was supposed to specialise in what they called ‘waking comas’. They didn’t understand a damn thing about shell shock.”
“Cowardice,” Ianto commented sadly. “That’s what you said they considered shell shock to be. That the sufferers were cowards who refused to fight.”
“Right,” Jack said. “That’s what a panel of officious bastards who had never seen the battlefields had just decided I was when Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell turned up.”
“Bloody hell,” Ianto murmured. “Why do I think this story is not going end well for you?”
“Alice was given the option to take me back to Cardiff,” Jack said bleakly. “Torchwood priority, they called it. Alice told them they would be taking me back, in a coffin.”
Ianto blanched and swore into Jack’s shoulder.
“She told them that I was every bit the coward they’d judged me to be, and that she’d take great pleasure in transporting my corpse back to Cardiff for burial in an unmarked grave. I was taken out the very next morning and shot for cowardice. When I resurrected from that, I was trapped inside a wooden coffin that was being transported by wagon. I suffocated to death eleven times before they finally let me out. The only good thing in the whole mess was that being executed more or less reset my brain, and cancelled out the shell shock.”
“Bloody hell, Jack…” Ianto whispered, holding Jack as tightly as he could.
“I decided I wasn’t taking any chances when World War II came around. I fought in the early campaigns but about two years in, when I started to feel myself going the same way as I had in World War I, I faked a permanent injury and got myself honourably discharged. Alice Guppy was long dead by then, but the crew at Torchwood wasn’t much better so instead of going back to Cardiff, I instead found a remote town and to avoid suspicions that I was a deserter, I joined the Home Guard. Made sure that I complained regularly about the bastards who’d sent me home just because I had a niggly leg after getting strafed by enemy fire. It was enough to allay any suspicions, at any rate… and that was also when I met Estelle.”
Ianto smiled, though it was somewhat melancholy.
“She cared deeply for you.”
“I cared for her, too. I wish I hadn’t had to leave her, but back then, no one would have understood, and there just wasn’t the means to be travelling around the way people do now. I didn’t want her resenting me, too, when she got older and I didn’t.”
Ianto rubbed Jack’s back soothingly.
“I know I didn’t have the chance to get to know her, but from what you’ve told me of her, I can understand why you walked away. I just hope you know that I’ll never resent you, Jack. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you,” Jack whispered. “Thank you.”
They were still clinging to each other when the launch docked at the pier, and it was Ianto who first noticed who it was who was waiting for them.
“Oh, bloody hell, really?” he muttered under his breath. Puzzled, Jack looked in the direction that Ianto was frowning in, only to utter a few choice words of his own.
“What is Gwen doing here?”
“I expect I could make a fairly accurate guess,” Ianto murmured, “and though I really do hope I’m wrong…”
“You probably aren’t,” Jack concluded darkly.
Ianto caught hold of his hand and squeezed lightly.
“I suppose we’ll just have to go and see, won’t we?”
* * * * *
Gwen knew she was not supposed to be at the pier. She knew she should have been at the Hub, writing her reports. The whole situation with the boy who had come through the Rift was plaguing her mind, though, and she couldn’t make herself focus on mundane matters until she’d at least tried to make Jack see the situation her way. And so she’d called Tosh and told a little white lie about getting a call from Andy Davidson about a weevil on the rampage and had headed for the pier to wait for Jack and Ianto’s return.
As it turned out, she’d had to wait the better part of the morning, and had to fend off Tosh over the phone at least three times. She was relieved to finally see the launch in the distance, heading swiftly in to dock – she didn’t think she had it in her to fend off another demanding phone call from the tech specialist. Of course, she knew Toshiko had every right to demand to know where she was, but she had to do this. She had to see Jack.
She approached slowly as they alighted from the launch and walked towards her, hand-in-hand. It was with not inconsiderable effort that she chose to ignore that gesture, silently reminding herself that they were, in fact, in a relationship and that they were not doing it just to spite her.
“Good morning, lads,” she greeted them, putting as much cheer into her voice as she could. While Ianto inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of her cordial greeting, Jack wasted no such time.
“What are you doing here, Gwen?” the Captain asked bluntly. “Because unless there was a Rift alert focused on this area, you should be back at the Hub.”
“I needed to talk to you, Jack,” Gwen told him, all pretence falling away. She knew that Jack understood her purpose for being there and that there was no point in pretending otherwise. “Away from the Hub. You can’t just keep dodging me on this.”
“Damn it, Gwen,” Jack sighed. “Why can’t you leave this alone?”
“Because most of the people in that facility have families who think that they’re dead! That boy is one of them!”
“Gwen,” Jack said tersely, “Jason is from a parallel world. He technically doesn’t exist in this world, and neither does the town he came from, or any of the people he used to know. More to the point, it turns out that the shield that came through with him was a transmutational device of some sort. We have to keep him under surveillance for at least the next few weeks before we make any hard decisions about his future, and nothing you say or do will change that necessity.”
The stubborn defiance she exuded, mixed with the now typical wide-eyed and teary expression on her face, made Jack want to bang his head against something hard. The worst part was that he didn’t think she even realised that she was attempting to emotionally manipulate him. It was something that was so deeply ingrained into her personality that she honestly believed she was simply being sympathetic and empathetic.
He knew now that it was the glimpse of that part of her personality that had made him think she was displaying a humanity that the rest of them had lost. It wasn’t until much later that he realised his team hadn’t lost their humanity at all.
“First Jonah, and now this boy… Jason, you said his name is? Jack, when will it end?”
“When the Rift stops spitting out victims and dropping them in our laps, damaged beyond recovery and needing someone to take care of them for the rest of their lives because they can’t ever integrate back into society!” Jack exploded, causing Gwen to take a step back in shock at the fury in his voice.
“Perhaps we should head back to the Hub,” Ianto murmured, speaking more to Jack than to Gwen. “I’ll make you a lovely cup of coffee, hmm? Might even break out the chocolate biscuits.”
Jack allowed Ianto to usher him past Gwen and they were almost to the end of the pier before Jack stopped and turned back to her.
“Go home, Gwen. Spend the day with Rhys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It was as blunt a dismissal as Jack could have given, that even Gwen recognised it for what it was, judging by the red in her cheeks. She walked towards them, desperation in her face and in her voice.
“Can I at least go out to Flat Holm and see him and talk to him?”
Jack thought of the fragile state of mind Jason had been in when they’d reluctantly left him to Helen’s care that morning, and shuddered at the thought of letting Gwen anywhere near him.
“Not yet,” he answered. “You’ll have a chance, but not now. And don’t even think about going there behind my back, Gwen. If I hear that you’ve gone out there anyway, you don’t want to know how angry I’ll be. Just go home. Take the day and come back to work tomorrow.”
Jack continued on his way, not giving her a chance to respond.
“Ianto?” she pleaded, turning her attention to her fellow countryman.
“I’m sorry, Gwen,” he said soberly. “I helped you once because I didn’t believe Flat Holm should be a secret from the rest of the team, but I won’t go behind his back again. Not over this. You need to learn that sometimes, he really does know better than we do.”
Anger flashed across her face and she opened her mouth to speak, but Ianto cut her off.
“If you’re about to make a crass remark about me being on Jack’s side because I’m sleeping with him, then don’t. I was working with the staff and residents at Flat Holm long before you ever heard the name Jonah Bevin. I helped to keep things running out there the entire time that Jack was away. You don’t get to walk in and start telling us that everything we’re doing there is wrong, because it’s not. Your ideals don’t work for those people at Flat Holm, and it’s time you accepted that. As for Jason, we’ll continue to follow protocol, and Jason himself has agreed that it’s how it needs to be. When the time comes, if it’s determined that he isn’t suffering psychological damage, then he will be allowed to leave the island. Then, and only then, will we decide what will be done to assist him. If you don’t like that, then so be it. That is the way it is and where Flat Holm is concerned, that is the way things will stay. You will accept that Jack has done the best that anyone could hope to do for those people and you will stop trying to manipulate him and everyone else emotionally in order to get your own way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a boyfriend to make coffee for, and you have a husband to get home to.”
Without waiting for her to respond, Ianto strode after Jack, joining him on the boardwalk and the two of them headed for the tourist office entrance together. It was only as they entered the run-down looking office that Ianto risked a glance back.
“Tell me she’s not still on the pier?” Jack asked. Ianto shook his head.
“No, she’s not on the pier. She’s currently walking across the Plass in the direction of the underground car park.”
A heavy sigh of relief escaped Jack’s lips, and his shoulders slumped heavily as he finally relaxed.
“Thank you. That was one hell of a speech you made back there.”
“Yes,” Ianto mused. “Well, only time will tell as to whether it will have any sort of positive effect on her. I know that she’s particularly annoyed that I won’t side with her again over Flat Holm. Unfortunately, I’m afraid she completely misinterpreted the reason as to why I gave her the GPS that night. It wasn’t because I thought she was right. It was because I felt you were wrong.”
Jack raised an eyebrow in a very Ianto-esque manner as they went through into the hidden passageway.
“Is there a difference?”
“Of course there is. I believed you were wrong only in that you were keeping the secret of Flat Holm to yourself instead of allowing the team to support you. And yes, I know why you kept it a secret for so long, but we are not Torchwood from before the year Two Thousand. We are a different team. We’re your team, and you chose us because we weren’t the same as any of those who came before us. You owed it to yourself to trust us and let us share the burden. That’s why I gave Gwen the GPS that night. It wasn’t to help her satisfy her incessant need to know everything. It was to end the secrecy. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry it worked out the way it did. I never imagined that she would go so far as to insist on bringing Nikki Bevin to Flat Holm, and the way she emotionally blackmailed you into allowing that was unconscionable.”
Before they could reach the main cog door of the Hub, Jack caught Ianto by the wrist and pulled him close in a fierce hug.
“I was angry at the time, but I understand now, and I’m grateful. I should have known you had my welfare in mind.”
“Always,” Ianto murmured, kissing Jack softly. “You deserve to have someone look out for you, you know, and I’ll do that for you for as long as I’m allowed.”
It was a melancholy reminder that Jack would only have Ianto for a short time, and that was something Jack didn’t care to contemplate.
“C’mon,” he murmured, giving Ianto a last, quick squeeze. “Work to do.”
Ianto smiled knowingly, and allowed Jack to lead the way back into the Hub.
* * * * *
to be continued....
Chapter Seven: Back to the Mainland
Author: blucougar57
Summary: A new rift victim proves to be a revelation to the Torchwood team, and then some.
Rating: T
Warnings: Jack and Ianto have a heart-to-heart; Gwen sticks her beak in again, and Jack threatens to break it off. Well, maybe not, but I’m sure he’s thinking it.
The journey back to the mainland from Flat Holm was made mostly in silence. Jason’s grief at the realisation of the permanent separation from his parents had affected both Jack and Ianto deeply, for different reasons.
Standing at the prow of the boat, letting the water spray up into his face, Ianto reflected on how that was something that he and Jack both had in common with Jason. Both men had lost their parents too young, in one way or another. He had lost his mother to mental illness and then eventually to death, and his father… Well, he’d lost his father emotionally even before his mother became ill, so that parent’s death later on had meant nothing other than as a spur to put Ianto onto the path which would lead him to Torchwood and, ultimately, to Jack.
Jack, on the other hand, had lost his father tragically to death during the same alien incursion that had seen his brother Gray taken captive. The loss of his mother had come not with her death, but with her rejection of him over blaming him for failing to protect his little brother.
That, Ianto reflected sadly, was something that still weighed heavily on Jack’s conscience, and would possibly never truly heal. It hadn’t helped that Jack’s reunion with Gray had led the younger man to reinforce Jack’s belief that he was at fault. Ianto had long since learned that he would never be able to stop Jack from believing that. Instead, the best he could do for his lover was to reassure him that it would never affect his feelings for him.
Arms slipped around his waist, and the warm body pressing up against him from behind provided a welcome distraction from the perils of his thoughts.
“I guess you’re probably thinking the same things I am,” Jack murmured into Ianto’s ear. Ianto let his head fall back to rest on Jack’s shoulder.
“Most likely, yes.”
“This could end up causing us a lot of pain.”
It wasn’t a question, and Ianto decided against vocalising a reply. Jack sighed, and the sensation of his breath tickled Ianto’s ear.
“Are we doing the right thing, Ianto?”
At that, Ianto twisted in Jack’s arms so that they were face to face.
“I believe we are. Mind you, I have been known to be mistaken, on occasion.”
Jack smiled at the light tongue-in-cheek comment.
“I like the kid. I don’t know if it’s going to turn out to be a good idea, or a bad one, but I want to see that he’s taken care of. After everything he told us today, I’m more certain than ever that this is what we need to do.”
“You know I’m with you, cariad,” Ianto murmured. “I think Tosh will understand. Owen might not necessarily agree, but I think he’ll understand, too. I don’t know about Gwen…”
Jack huffed in frustration, sounding amusingly like a braying horse. The sound drew a smile from Ianto before he ploughed on.
“She probably won’t agree with it. She’ll likely argue the point with you, in front of all of us, no less… But I don’t think even she will be your biggest challenge. I think the Doctor is going to be that.”
Jack let his breath out in a rush and pulled Ianto fully into his arms for a prolonged cuddle.
“Did I tell you how he reacted when I first told him I was with Torchwood?”
“No,” Ianto said, suddenly curious. He hadn’t been surprised to learn that the Doctor initially despised Torchwood for what had happened at Canary Wharf. He had been surprised that the Time Lord had apparently forgiven the institute enough to rush in to save Owen and Tosh from certain death during Gray’s rampage. No explanation had ever been given, aside from a dismissive ‘all water under the bridge’ remark. Ianto wondered if he was finally going to get that explanation.
“It was during the Saxon incident,” Jack mumbled in Ianto’s shoulder. “We… the Doctor, Martha and I… were holed up in an abandoned warehouse. The Doctor had just told us a story about Time Lord initiations and how they had a tendency to drive some candidates insane, which is what he thinks happened to the Master. An alert came through on my wrist strap, and I had no choice. I had to tell him.”
“I’ll wager he never gave you a chance to explain that you weren’t a willing recruit,” Ianto said dryly. Jack chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound.
“No, he didn’t. In fact, the last time he was that angry at me, it was his previous regeneration, and he’d just made me realise my attempt to con him had put the whole planet at risk.”
“Ouch. Not pleasant.”
“It wasn’t. Of course, then everything went to hell, and it kind of ended up on the backburner. Later, after everything was over, we had another chance to talk, and I told him the whole story, from being stuck on Earth in the 1800s and all about Alice fucking Guppy and Emily fucking Holroyd.”
“They must have been bad,” Ianto said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word before. Not even when we play rough.”
“They tortured me, Ianto. They experimented on me and they tortured me. I tried to get away from them so many times, and every time they managed to track me down and bring me back. It’s kind of disturbing to think that I looked forward to the start of World War I, just to be able to get away from Torchwood for a while.”
Ianto couldn’t quite fathom that. It seemed that Jack must have gone from one hell into another, knowing as he did that Jack had fought in some of the bloodiest and most wretched campaigns of World War I and World War II.
“I would have thought you’d have taken advantage of the distraction, and gone into hiding,” Ianto murmured.
“The idea did occur to me,” Jack admitted. “It was tempting, too. Torchwood was wrapped up in developing advanced weaponry for the war effort, and I lost contact with them for most of the war. The only time they tracked me down was when I was…”
Jack suddenly stopped, his breath catching in his throat. Sensing a titbit of information that had previously remained strictly private, Ianto carded his fingers lovingly through Jack’s hair.
“It’s all right, cariad. You don’t have to tell me anything that you’re not ready to share.”
“It’s just… I’m a little ashamed of it,” Jack admitted miserably. “I want to tell you, but…”
“I won’t think any worse of you,” Ianto promised him. “Whatever it is, I promise you don’t have to be afraid of what I’ll think.”
Jack sighed a little, and spoke.
“They found me in a hospital in Essex. I was shipped back to England and sent there to recover after the Battle of the Somme.”
“You were injured?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I was shipped home. You know me. My injuries had healed well and truly before I was found.”
For a long moment, Ianto was confused. Then, he remembered Tommy Brockless, and realisation struck.
“You were shell-shocked.”
“Yeah,” Jack confirmed softly. “I was shell-shocked. Hard to believe, I know…”
“Jack,” Ianto chided him lightly. “With everything you’ve experienced, I’d be amazed if you hadn’t suffered from shell shock at some point. Everyone has their breaking point, and the Somme was one of the most horrific campaigns of World War I.”
Jack shut his eyes, though Ianto imagined that probably didn’t help him to overcome the power of his own memories.
“I’d fought in battles before. I’d seen terrible things. But during the battle of the Somme, I died more than five hundred times. Five hundred times, Ianto, and each time I had to get back up like nothing had happened, and keep fighting. At first they called me the luckiest bastard on the battlefield but before long they started calling me other things. ‘Jinx’ was the least of them. I was the man who kept getting back up when no one else did. In the end, the men that I was supposed to be fighting alongside were as scared of me as they were of our enemies. Between that, the constant deaths, and seeing so many good men and boys dying while I just kept getting back up…? It was too much. Eventually, I just stopped functioning.
“At first they thought I had an injury that no one had picked up on and I was evacuated and shipped back to England. They sent me to a war hospital in Essex that was supposed to specialise in what they called ‘waking comas’. They didn’t understand a damn thing about shell shock.”
“Cowardice,” Ianto commented sadly. “That’s what you said they considered shell shock to be. That the sufferers were cowards who refused to fight.”
“Right,” Jack said. “That’s what a panel of officious bastards who had never seen the battlefields had just decided I was when Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell turned up.”
“Bloody hell,” Ianto murmured. “Why do I think this story is not going end well for you?”
“Alice was given the option to take me back to Cardiff,” Jack said bleakly. “Torchwood priority, they called it. Alice told them they would be taking me back, in a coffin.”
Ianto blanched and swore into Jack’s shoulder.
“She told them that I was every bit the coward they’d judged me to be, and that she’d take great pleasure in transporting my corpse back to Cardiff for burial in an unmarked grave. I was taken out the very next morning and shot for cowardice. When I resurrected from that, I was trapped inside a wooden coffin that was being transported by wagon. I suffocated to death eleven times before they finally let me out. The only good thing in the whole mess was that being executed more or less reset my brain, and cancelled out the shell shock.”
“Bloody hell, Jack…” Ianto whispered, holding Jack as tightly as he could.
“I decided I wasn’t taking any chances when World War II came around. I fought in the early campaigns but about two years in, when I started to feel myself going the same way as I had in World War I, I faked a permanent injury and got myself honourably discharged. Alice Guppy was long dead by then, but the crew at Torchwood wasn’t much better so instead of going back to Cardiff, I instead found a remote town and to avoid suspicions that I was a deserter, I joined the Home Guard. Made sure that I complained regularly about the bastards who’d sent me home just because I had a niggly leg after getting strafed by enemy fire. It was enough to allay any suspicions, at any rate… and that was also when I met Estelle.”
Ianto smiled, though it was somewhat melancholy.
“She cared deeply for you.”
“I cared for her, too. I wish I hadn’t had to leave her, but back then, no one would have understood, and there just wasn’t the means to be travelling around the way people do now. I didn’t want her resenting me, too, when she got older and I didn’t.”
Ianto rubbed Jack’s back soothingly.
“I know I didn’t have the chance to get to know her, but from what you’ve told me of her, I can understand why you walked away. I just hope you know that I’ll never resent you, Jack. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you,” Jack whispered. “Thank you.”
They were still clinging to each other when the launch docked at the pier, and it was Ianto who first noticed who it was who was waiting for them.
“Oh, bloody hell, really?” he muttered under his breath. Puzzled, Jack looked in the direction that Ianto was frowning in, only to utter a few choice words of his own.
“What is Gwen doing here?”
“I expect I could make a fairly accurate guess,” Ianto murmured, “and though I really do hope I’m wrong…”
“You probably aren’t,” Jack concluded darkly.
Ianto caught hold of his hand and squeezed lightly.
“I suppose we’ll just have to go and see, won’t we?”
Gwen knew she was not supposed to be at the pier. She knew she should have been at the Hub, writing her reports. The whole situation with the boy who had come through the Rift was plaguing her mind, though, and she couldn’t make herself focus on mundane matters until she’d at least tried to make Jack see the situation her way. And so she’d called Tosh and told a little white lie about getting a call from Andy Davidson about a weevil on the rampage and had headed for the pier to wait for Jack and Ianto’s return.
As it turned out, she’d had to wait the better part of the morning, and had to fend off Tosh over the phone at least three times. She was relieved to finally see the launch in the distance, heading swiftly in to dock – she didn’t think she had it in her to fend off another demanding phone call from the tech specialist. Of course, she knew Toshiko had every right to demand to know where she was, but she had to do this. She had to see Jack.
She approached slowly as they alighted from the launch and walked towards her, hand-in-hand. It was with not inconsiderable effort that she chose to ignore that gesture, silently reminding herself that they were, in fact, in a relationship and that they were not doing it just to spite her.
“Good morning, lads,” she greeted them, putting as much cheer into her voice as she could. While Ianto inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of her cordial greeting, Jack wasted no such time.
“What are you doing here, Gwen?” the Captain asked bluntly. “Because unless there was a Rift alert focused on this area, you should be back at the Hub.”
“I needed to talk to you, Jack,” Gwen told him, all pretence falling away. She knew that Jack understood her purpose for being there and that there was no point in pretending otherwise. “Away from the Hub. You can’t just keep dodging me on this.”
“Damn it, Gwen,” Jack sighed. “Why can’t you leave this alone?”
“Because most of the people in that facility have families who think that they’re dead! That boy is one of them!”
“Gwen,” Jack said tersely, “Jason is from a parallel world. He technically doesn’t exist in this world, and neither does the town he came from, or any of the people he used to know. More to the point, it turns out that the shield that came through with him was a transmutational device of some sort. We have to keep him under surveillance for at least the next few weeks before we make any hard decisions about his future, and nothing you say or do will change that necessity.”
The stubborn defiance she exuded, mixed with the now typical wide-eyed and teary expression on her face, made Jack want to bang his head against something hard. The worst part was that he didn’t think she even realised that she was attempting to emotionally manipulate him. It was something that was so deeply ingrained into her personality that she honestly believed she was simply being sympathetic and empathetic.
He knew now that it was the glimpse of that part of her personality that had made him think she was displaying a humanity that the rest of them had lost. It wasn’t until much later that he realised his team hadn’t lost their humanity at all.
“First Jonah, and now this boy… Jason, you said his name is? Jack, when will it end?”
“When the Rift stops spitting out victims and dropping them in our laps, damaged beyond recovery and needing someone to take care of them for the rest of their lives because they can’t ever integrate back into society!” Jack exploded, causing Gwen to take a step back in shock at the fury in his voice.
“Perhaps we should head back to the Hub,” Ianto murmured, speaking more to Jack than to Gwen. “I’ll make you a lovely cup of coffee, hmm? Might even break out the chocolate biscuits.”
Jack allowed Ianto to usher him past Gwen and they were almost to the end of the pier before Jack stopped and turned back to her.
“Go home, Gwen. Spend the day with Rhys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It was as blunt a dismissal as Jack could have given, that even Gwen recognised it for what it was, judging by the red in her cheeks. She walked towards them, desperation in her face and in her voice.
“Can I at least go out to Flat Holm and see him and talk to him?”
Jack thought of the fragile state of mind Jason had been in when they’d reluctantly left him to Helen’s care that morning, and shuddered at the thought of letting Gwen anywhere near him.
“Not yet,” he answered. “You’ll have a chance, but not now. And don’t even think about going there behind my back, Gwen. If I hear that you’ve gone out there anyway, you don’t want to know how angry I’ll be. Just go home. Take the day and come back to work tomorrow.”
Jack continued on his way, not giving her a chance to respond.
“Ianto?” she pleaded, turning her attention to her fellow countryman.
“I’m sorry, Gwen,” he said soberly. “I helped you once because I didn’t believe Flat Holm should be a secret from the rest of the team, but I won’t go behind his back again. Not over this. You need to learn that sometimes, he really does know better than we do.”
Anger flashed across her face and she opened her mouth to speak, but Ianto cut her off.
“If you’re about to make a crass remark about me being on Jack’s side because I’m sleeping with him, then don’t. I was working with the staff and residents at Flat Holm long before you ever heard the name Jonah Bevin. I helped to keep things running out there the entire time that Jack was away. You don’t get to walk in and start telling us that everything we’re doing there is wrong, because it’s not. Your ideals don’t work for those people at Flat Holm, and it’s time you accepted that. As for Jason, we’ll continue to follow protocol, and Jason himself has agreed that it’s how it needs to be. When the time comes, if it’s determined that he isn’t suffering psychological damage, then he will be allowed to leave the island. Then, and only then, will we decide what will be done to assist him. If you don’t like that, then so be it. That is the way it is and where Flat Holm is concerned, that is the way things will stay. You will accept that Jack has done the best that anyone could hope to do for those people and you will stop trying to manipulate him and everyone else emotionally in order to get your own way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a boyfriend to make coffee for, and you have a husband to get home to.”
Without waiting for her to respond, Ianto strode after Jack, joining him on the boardwalk and the two of them headed for the tourist office entrance together. It was only as they entered the run-down looking office that Ianto risked a glance back.
“Tell me she’s not still on the pier?” Jack asked. Ianto shook his head.
“No, she’s not on the pier. She’s currently walking across the Plass in the direction of the underground car park.”
A heavy sigh of relief escaped Jack’s lips, and his shoulders slumped heavily as he finally relaxed.
“Thank you. That was one hell of a speech you made back there.”
“Yes,” Ianto mused. “Well, only time will tell as to whether it will have any sort of positive effect on her. I know that she’s particularly annoyed that I won’t side with her again over Flat Holm. Unfortunately, I’m afraid she completely misinterpreted the reason as to why I gave her the GPS that night. It wasn’t because I thought she was right. It was because I felt you were wrong.”
Jack raised an eyebrow in a very Ianto-esque manner as they went through into the hidden passageway.
“Is there a difference?”
“Of course there is. I believed you were wrong only in that you were keeping the secret of Flat Holm to yourself instead of allowing the team to support you. And yes, I know why you kept it a secret for so long, but we are not Torchwood from before the year Two Thousand. We are a different team. We’re your team, and you chose us because we weren’t the same as any of those who came before us. You owed it to yourself to trust us and let us share the burden. That’s why I gave Gwen the GPS that night. It wasn’t to help her satisfy her incessant need to know everything. It was to end the secrecy. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry it worked out the way it did. I never imagined that she would go so far as to insist on bringing Nikki Bevin to Flat Holm, and the way she emotionally blackmailed you into allowing that was unconscionable.”
Before they could reach the main cog door of the Hub, Jack caught Ianto by the wrist and pulled him close in a fierce hug.
“I was angry at the time, but I understand now, and I’m grateful. I should have known you had my welfare in mind.”
“Always,” Ianto murmured, kissing Jack softly. “You deserve to have someone look out for you, you know, and I’ll do that for you for as long as I’m allowed.”
It was a melancholy reminder that Jack would only have Ianto for a short time, and that was something Jack didn’t care to contemplate.
“C’mon,” he murmured, giving Ianto a last, quick squeeze. “Work to do.”
Ianto smiled knowingly, and allowed Jack to lead the way back into the Hub.
to be continued....
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Of course Gwennie tried to manipulate Jack, glad he dismissed her!
Brilliant update. Thanks.
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In my world, Jack will never again bow to Gwennie-poo's manipulations. Her arrogance and sheer defiance of Jack is on show in "Adrift" more than any other episode. The scene where she confronts Jack after interrupting him and Ianto in the greenhouse was the height of it. Where he tells her to let it go, and she says she can't - watch her eyes. The look on her face screams "I dare you to try and stop me".
Whenever I see that, I so desperately want to slap that look right off her face.
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The glimpses into Jack's past were chilling, though. And very, very believable, knowing human nature.
Sorry for the absence. Work was quite hectic, plus we were preparing for a concert with the choir, so I wasn't much around.
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I could just imagine Alice Guppy leaving Jack to be shot for cowardice. I may write an off-shoot, based during WWII, that expands on the story Jack told Ianto.
*smiles* My plot bunnies just started hopping...
I sympathise with being busy. I recently started a new job, and my brain has been a little overloaded with new everything. By the end of the week, I had no energy left at all. :/
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Don't underestimate Jason yet - he can be tough as nails when he needs to be, and he was well taught by his parents not to tolerate insincerity and selfishness.
As for Jack, I could never write him as being sucked in by Gwen's self-involvement. I honestly think the small glimpse he initially got of her personality enamoured him to her because he thought he was seeing another "Rose". But where, in the series, Jack never lost that "Rose"-tinted view of Gwen, in my stories, he lost it pretty early on. Luckily, he has another to look to for his morality compass - Ianto.
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