False Memories, Chapter 3/4

[criccieth]

Story: False Memories
Chapter: 3/4
Title: Tuesday Morning, 7 a.m.
Word Count: circa 7,000
Spoilers: S2 Ep 5: Adam, and very minor spoilers for S1 Ep 4, 6 & 7: Cyberwoman, Countrycide and Greeks Bearing Gifts
Rating: Teens. Based on 'Adam', so some nastiness
Pairing: None direct
Disclaimer: Torchwood and anyone you recognise belong to the BBC and were created by RTD. If you recognise any dialogue, it's from the show.


Tuesday 7 a.m.
Standing in the night-dim Hub and watching Tosh on the CCTV smiling at Adam, Ianto shudders one hand raking through his hair as his breath comes in great rasps. Remember.

“Easy,” Jack says. His arm is still about Ianto’s shoulders and now his hand comes up and his fingers brush the side of Ianto’s jaw, gentle as his voice. “Take it easy.”

Watching the screen Ianto realises that unlike Owen, Tosh arrived in the same clothes he remembers her wearing that day. The change is in her body language, in the way she stands and moves. She straightens her shoulders, lifts her head and as she sits down she slides the black cardigan from her shoulders. Later, she undoes the top two buttons on the blouse. He feels a flicker of guilt, because Tosh’s self-confidence has seemed so natural over these last two days and he wonders if any of it will survive the removal of Adam. Are they about to do the right thing?

Then he remembers Adam’s threat - cross me and I will fill you full of fake memories until your head is on fire, because that is how I exist and he remembers the last words he heard before he was left on the Hub floor, remembering (seeing, God help me, seeing…no. No, I didn’t do that) a rain-soaked alley and a dead girl. I forgot what a rush it is, feeding in the bad stuff. And the sheer delight in Adam’s voice.

He is not the first Adam has attacked like this. And with that, he recalls that they have all known that today is Adam and Tosh’s anniversary and he wonders just when his memories were changed to tell him that. Today? Or yesterday? Nausea curls inside him, because he is suddenly certain where Adam is at this very moment. Another exclusive club, Tosh he thinks with a surge of bitterness. Just the two members again. His mind, her body - violated by someone they thought of as a friend. Jack has just told him he isn’t a murderer but if Adam was in front of him right now.… his hands flex and then the horror and fear hit him again and he stumbles back, dropping into the chair and burying his face in his hands. He can remember the rain and the way her footsteps echoed off the metal rolldown door as she ran for her life and the fear in her eyes and the suppleness of the leather gloves over his hands and the feel of her lips when he put his finger to them and the way it felt when she begged and…. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that, I didn’t do that, I….

“Hey!” Jack’s voice, Jack’s hands on his and now Jack pulls his hands from his face and one of Jack’s hands is under his jaw, lifting his head so he has to look into the other’s eyes.

“He put those memories in your head, Ianto. That is not you. I know that.” Jack straightens, pulling Ianto to his feet. “Evidence. Evidence he can’t have changed…..” Jack looks around for a moment and then snaps his fingers.

“Blood samples!” He makes for the autopsy area and Ianto manages to force his legs to move, to follow Jack because it’s what he does. But at the top of the stairs he grabs hold of the bannister and sinks down to sit on the top step, because if he doesn’t then he’s going to fall over.

Jack yanks open the fridge, extracting the rack of vials. A blood sample from each of them, 25ml every thirty-six hours as per regulations. Tested to make sure they are none of them under any sort of external influence from drugs and to ensure there’s always a baseline to test emergency samples against. Each sample ID’d and dated, kept for nine days. He lifts the rack, spinning it and looking at the names and dates as they pass his eye.

Two days ago: Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones.

Five days ago: Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato.

Eight days ago: Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness….and one that has got turned around so he can’t see the name. He lifts it, reads the tiny label. Ianto Jones. His heart is pounding in his ears. He looks up.

“Where’s Adam’s blood sample?”

Even as he returns his attention to the rack to double-check, from the corner of his eye he sees Ianto’s head roll rather than turn towards the work-stations, the way he only moves when he’s exhausted. Then Ianto climbs to his feet and heads for the nearest computer.

There is no vial labelled ‘Adam Smith’, yet there is no reason that Jack’s memories will give him that there shouldn’t be. He feels cold inside, because if Ianto hadn’t read his diary or if in his fear and horror he hadn’t turned to Jack for help then in a few hours they would all have come trooping down here to give the latest sample. And then no doubt when Owen queried the absence of a previous sample from Adam, the intruder would have smiled and touched and remember? And then there would have been a sixth vial here, and this proof would be useless. He shoves the rack back in the fridge and takes the short flight of stairs in two strides.

“Everything’s in order here.” Ianto has Adam’s personnel file on-screen by the time Jack reaches the chair, even though technically he doesn’t have the passwords to access it. Jack has an unsettling sensation in his head as one set of memories tell him that Ianto has never had the passwords to that kind of information and how has he accessed it and does this mean he’s hiding something else? While at the same time he has a memory of a smirk and a quiet, deep voice saying I know everything and he is not at all surprised that Ianto would know his passwords because Ianto takes so much of the mundane work off his hands. He shoves both memories away, whichever one is the truth will still be there later, and steps up behind the desk-chair.

“When was it last updated?”

“Umm….” Ianto calls up the log and tenses. “Twenty-four hours ago.”

With a suddenness that startles them both, the main lights come up as the computers automatically kick over to day-time. It’s half-seven. A moment later, they hear the cog-door. Someone else has entered the Hub.

They move, acting without the need to talk. Ianto kills the link to the staff files even as he stands up and turns away from the screen, while Jack snatches up a book lying close to hand and opens it at random. They both turn towards the sound of the cog-door rolling open and foot-steps approaching and Jack notices Ianto shoving his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. They see the flowers before they see Owen. There’s a frozen moment as they all look at each other and Jack feels again that jarring sensation of two sets of memories. Part of him knows that Owen is always here early, dedicated to his job and taking everything seriously. And part of him knows that Owen is only ever here before nine if there’s an alert or when he’s spent the night in someone else’s bed. Ironically, both parts of his mind are wondering why Owen has a massive bunch of flowers in his hands and it seems that Ianto is wondering the same thing because he turns to stare at Jack for a moment. Then they hear the cog door start to roll open again and two sets of footsteps and all three scatter and Jack has a nagging memory of alarms, the cog-door sounding an alarm.

Owen puts the flowers onto Tosh’s station and turns away as Ianto walks past him and up the spiral stairway, away from Adam. Jack hesitates, wondering whether they can bring Owen to their side, convince him of what they both now know. Then Owen moves past him, pulling off his jacket as he heads towards the autopsy bay, and they can hear Adam and Tosh and the opportunity is lost.

Jack and Ianto watch, the one from just outside his office and the other from the catwalk, as Tosh sees the flowers and a delighted smile comes over her face. She throws a glance to Adam, clearly wondering if her lover has done this as a surprise but Adam shrugs. As she leans over the gift, Owen comes cautiously back up from his own area.

They watch as Owen fumbles his painful way through an apology for something that neither of them has a memory of. They exchange quick glances both wondering if this is something that really happened - something that Adam has wiped from their memory, or something they simply didn’t witness. Perhaps it’s even something Adam has placed into Tosh and Owen’s memory. However Adam’s memory-modifications have changed them, whatever they will all be like with him gone, they both know this threat is as real as anything Torchwood has ever dealt with. Memories define us, Jack thinks. We have to remove his, to know what’s real and who we really are.

Adam is watching Owen and Tosh and the sneer on his face sends a shudder down Ianto’s spine because he saw that expression earlier, when he was trying to stop Adam. Just before the alley, and Adam’s arm around his neck and Adam waving his diary. And Adam and he, moving down the alley with the girl’s body and…. NO! I didn’t do that. That’s not real. He walks along the upper gantry, past the dragon in flight, tugging his sleeves down and securing his cuffs. He watches Adam, but with every step he’s aware of Jack’s presence down below. He could close his eyes and point straight to Jack, the rock that just saved his sanity. He’d expected to be in the vaults, locked away. Expected Jack to be looming above him, threatening and snarling. Demanding to know what he had done this time. Who he had killed. Where the bodies were. Instead, Jack had offered security and safety and ‘this isn’t you’.

It had taken every shred of self-control, every last gasp of the determination that had brought them from Canary Wharf and kept Lisa a secret for months to stay at that desk last night. To sit and wait for Jack. Sit and wait for the chance to confess. Sit and wait for Jack’s verdict and sentence. To not go out, to not go…..roaming the streets at night, looking for bait. He’d waited, and Jack had saved him - and whichever poor random girl might have crossed his path.

The cog doors open again and Gwen comes round the entry-way into the main Hub. She looks almost as strained as Ianto feels and who can blame her? Rhys is a thoroughly decent man - Ianto likes him far more than he likes Johnny - and he would have taken good care of her last night, but for Gwen it must still have felt at first like being abandoned with a stranger. He watches, aware of Jack watching, as Tosh smiles a greeting.

“Hey - how are you today?”

“Things are coming back, slowly,” Gwen says. Adam starts to get up, smiling, as she comments that Rhys didn’t want her to come in. Ianto watches him, sickened. Is he going to take more of her memories? What is his plan - to remove all their recollections of that strange night when Gwen Cooper forgot her fiancé? Does he now assume that he can control Ianto because of what he has forced Ianto to believe is their shared secret? I help you dump the bodies, it’s me you call. And the memory surges up, vivid and real as the memory of sitting in Jack’s office not an hour ago and telling him of the murders: the memory of ringing Adam’s number, of his own voice. "Adam, I’ve done it again" and laughing softly. Adam’s calm reply, asking where he is, telling him where to wait. Adam helping him roll the body into a piece of carpet. The weight of it, sodden with rain and her, as they lift it and dump it into a metal container. Adam’s hand on his shoulder come on, you look like you need a drink mate and grinning at him in reply because yeah, he’s built up a thirst and…

And Jack’s voice, firm and calm and 'this isn’t you’. Jack knows him. Knows what he’s capable of and Jack has saved him. Again.

Standing at the top of the spiral stairs he watches as Adam moves towards Gwen, grinning and talking about ‘looking after her’ and holding out both arms.

“Come on, group hug!” The two women step happily into his embrace and Owen, who had been watching them with concern, comes forward eagerly to join the embrace and there are more memories in Ianto’s mind - of ‘group hug!’ and the six of them standing together in a warm circle, arms about each other.

But Jack’s eyes are on him and the memory stutters and crumbles and he can remember Jack’s hand on his shoulder as they watched the CCTV, and the feeling of complete safety when Jack had pulled him into an embrace after his confession. And another memory, re-gained since that embrace - of Sunday night, curled around each other in the small bed below Jack’s office and then Jack’s warmth behind him, around him. Jack’s hands dragging down his ribs, Jack’s cock oh-so-slowly sliding inside him, filling him…..That is real. He’s not sure how or why it’s real but he knows it is and when they have rid themselves of Adam and Adam’s memories he wonders what else will resurface.

He cannot be close to the others right now. He cannot be near this…. creature. Jack is standing, watching them and at this moment all Ianto wants is Jack’s presence beside him and he purposefully avoids the group standing at the foot of the stairs, twisting his body to move past without touching. And once more there is that juddering double-memory - of group hugs and friendship and Adam being what holds them all together. But also memories of standing in the shadows, of watching the others laugh and talk and joke and touch and knowing that they are not registering his absence, that he does not count. Memories of Jack leading the others out of the Hub - ‘team meal! Ianto, mind the shop!’. Memories of the hail of bullets that finally destroyed his world, destroyed all that was left of Lisa. Memories as real as those from when Lisa was fully herself, when she was well. And although his memories of her end in blood and horror and grief and guilt, he will not let Adam take them to help himself hide within the team - nor allow him to wipe them out while forcing others in.

He hears Adam behind him.

“Hey, Ianto, come here,” and fuck, the bastard’s words sound so normal. He stops in his tracks. In the days of Lisa and a Cyber-conversion unit he so often forced himself to pretend all was well that it is still second nature to him and so he turns around, thinking to pretend everything is as it should be. Adam has slid the jacket from his shoulders and holds it in his hand and there’s a concerned frown on his face.

“You all right, mate?” Adam asks and it would have been convincing if he hadn’t seen the footage of himself, cowering on the floor as this creature ripped into his mind. And fuck, Adam is reaching out for him and he will never let this thing touch him again and he jerks his shoulder out of reach before he has had time to think.

Anger flashes in Adam’s face and he stares straight into Ianto’s eyes. There’s a faint sneer on his face and then:-

“Listen, I could murder a coffee” and if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t hear the tiniest stress on the one word. So that is his idea - to blackmail Ianto, to make him think that he owes his freedom and life to Adam’s apparent knowledge and silence. He watches Adam wander back to his work station and turns away, his breath shaky. He wonders for a moment how he is going to get through the day, how he’s going to be able to hold on until Jack makes his move. Whatever it is, whenever it is, Ianto will have his back. It’s what he does. What he is.

It’s Adam’s own cruelty that decides Jack’s actions. Seeing Ianto jerk out of Adam’s reach, hearing Adam’s jibe and the look on Ianto’s face as he turns away. No, he’s not taking any more of this. Three long rapid strides carry him past Ianto and to Adam; and the Webley is in his hand and cocked and aimed at the back of Adam’s head. And no, he will not think about the memory that he knows with sickening certainty is real: the memory of holding this same gun to Ianto’s head. Not right now. He keeps his eyes on Adam but on the edge of his vision he can see that the other three have frozen in shock or horror, staring at him. He can sense Ianto just behind him, hear a faint catch of breath.

“Talk to me, Adam!” he says. “If that’s even your name.” And Adam turns his chair and he smiles, as though he thinks this is a joke.

“What?” he says with a laugh and now the other three are closing in slowly because they think Jack’s gone mad and he’s aware of Ianto pulling his disappear-into-the-background trick that he still does so well, melting back so they will forget he is even there. He will watch and wait and be ready to back Jack up in any way he needs. It’s what he is. What he does.

Gwen gives a soft, nervous laugh and she has that look on her face that drives Ianto quietly up the wall - what he’s dubbed her ‘now listen, sweetheart’ look, the one that says she’s already decided you’re in the wrong and she’s in the right.

“What are you doing, Jack?” she says with a nervous giggle and oh yes, that’s the tone that goes with the look - the one that says she knows best and why don’t you just be sensible and listen to her; and for the first time Jack realises just why the look and the voice piss Ianto off so much. Although, to be fair to Gwen, it really must look like he’s just gone mad.

“He’s not who you think he is,” Jack says firmly. “He’s been feeding himself into our memories, by touch.” He knows he’s going to have to convince the other three - hopefully without having to show them what Ianto has gone through.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Tosh says, a bewildered laugh in her voice but there is fear in her eyes and this feels horribly familiar, a member of the team in love with someone that could harm or destroy them all. Again. Thank fuck that the best way out of this is to retcon them all, because he’s not sure how well Ianto’s sanity will cope with another pass through this particular Hell.

“He didn’t exist until two days ago,” Jack says. Gwen and Owen are pressing forward, carefully, step by step and he has to hope like hell that none of them are going to try and disarm him because he doesn’t want to hurt any of them.

“Can somebody tell me what’s going on here, please?” and Adam is still acting like he thinks this is a crazy prank, grinning and laughing and he sounds so natural that Jack would almost believe him innocent. If it wasn’t for the memory of Ianto screaming and begging; and fighting to keep himself from leaving the Hub; and switching back and forth between horrified and exulted at what his own mind was telling him.

“Jack,” says Owen and his voice is careful, calm. “We’ve known him for years. He’s part of the team.” Next to him Gwen nods, her face tight with anxiety. But that isn’t right. Because Jack can remember Tosh in that UNIT hell-hole and the look on Owen’s face at Katie’s graveside. He can remember looking up from the Weevil in Bute Park to wonder how the hell he’d ever missed spotting this rent-boy and the look on Gwen’s face as she carried pizzas into the Hub with Ianto pacing behind her, that faint smile on his face. And he can even remember a university lab and Suzie looking up from the half-repaired Dalek gun she’d found. But he has no idea where or why he drew Adam into Torchwood on May 7th 2005.

“No,” he says. “He just made you think that.”

“Come on Jack,” Adam says and he reaches out as though for one of his companionable touches and like Ianto moments earlier, Jack twitches back out of reach and he lifts the Webley a fraction.

“Ah-ah-ah! You don’t get to me like that,” and Adam pulls back and he knows that Jack knows.

“Jack, you know me! You recruited me three years ago!” Adam says and his tone is oh-so-reasonable. Just like it always is, because it’s Adam who can talk Jack round when Gwen can’t force him to give way. It’s Adam he can take any problem to, Adam he can confide in, Adam he talks into the night with. He knows that, he remembers that. But there’s that double-memory judder again, because he holds his problems close to his chest and he confides snippets of himself only and those just to Ianto or sometimes to Gwen; and it’s Ianto he talks to late at night when their separate and mutual demons won’t let them rest. The real memories are becoming clearer now, memories that fill him with warmth or grief or anger or horror; while the memories of Adam are empty and flat.

“All I know is that when I think of my team,” Jack says, and the other three are looking from one to the other of them, wide-eyed, faces taut. “I see you there, but I don’t feel anything for you. No pride, no warmth….” And he is so proud of them all - Tosh who came through Hell with her kindness intact; Owen who can never express how much he needs to heal everyone; Gwen who blazes with passion and Ianto, who has surpassed everything Jack ever hoped for from him. They are his, his family; and his life has warmth and meaning because of them. But there is nothing for Adam.

“You, the one who I can ‘confide’ in,” he continues. “The one who unburied the dead,” he snarls out the last words through clenched teeth. He’d found a measure of peace, a settling of his past that even the idea that Hart might have been telling the truth for the first time in his life hasn’t destroyed. And then Adam had dug into his memories for his own ends and now he has to remember the day he utterly failed.

“Jack,” Gwen says, her tone making it clear she thinks she’s humouring a madman. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten him. Like I did with Rhys, yeah?”

“Oh, I should have spotted it then,” he says and really - they should have, shouldn’t they? Because however crazy their jobs are that really was a bizarrely specific bout of amnesia and you’d think, given that they deal with fucking aliens for a living, that at least one of them would have realised that maybe the Rift had something to do with it.

“That wasn’t stress,” he continued. “That was him. By making us think we know him, he disturbs our real memories.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adam says and he still sounds like he thinks this is funny and goddamn the bastard he sounds so utterly convincing. How the hell are they going to make the rest of the team see? Especially Tosh. He, Jack, hasn’t exactly got a stellar record of convincing team-mates that their loved one is a threat.

“I’m taking him to the vault!” he says, reaching out and grabbing hold of Adam’s shirt front to haul him bodily from the chair. He has no intention of touching the man himself, just in case.

“Jack, this is ridiculous,” Adam says and he’s still stringing the others along and if he can, Jack realises, he will try to touch him. Try to remove his memory of this and of uncovering the truth. Then he may well change their memories to turn them all on Ianto and Jack doesn’t want to think about what that will do to the other man.

He keeps the gun to Adam’s head because if it doesn’t have the ability to damage him then the proof of that will itself rip Adam’s web of lies apart and pushes the deceiver ahead of him towards the stairs.

“Move!” he snarls. Then there is the familiar click! of a handgun cocking.

“NO!” Tosh is holding the gun on him, her face full of love and pain and desperation and all Jack can think is god, no, not again, please not this again because haven’t they been here all-fucking-ready - Ianto and Lisa, and Tosh and Mary, and now Tosh and Adam; and he can see shock on the faces of Gwen and Owen as they both call her name, clearly not knowing what to do or which way to turn, and Ianto is sheet-white behind them all. She twists, aim shifting to Owen then Gwen then Ianto for a brief moment and back to the other two. Gwen is reaching out and Owen looks terrified.

“That’s not gonna help,” Owen says, fighting to sound calm.

“It’s fine, it’s fine” Gwen says and really? In what way and what world is any of this ‘fine’, Cooper? Because that hasn’t helped at all and Tosh is right on the edge so he speaks to keep her attention on him because if she’s going to shoot any of them it will have to be him.

“Toshiko?” and her gaze and her aim turn back to him, and Ianto starts to edge towards her, gaze fixed on her gun.

“I’m just going to lock him up,” Jack says, slow and calm and firm and Ianto moves closer again, using the distraction Jack is offering, his face rigid with strain. The spiteful little voice in Jack’s head, the one that sounds like the man John once knew, says hey, if you want this to be even more like last time, why not order Tosh to lock Adam up to prove whose side she’s on? As if Jack needed any more guilt trips about the echoes of That Night. He knows full-well that when the list of The All-Time Worst Fuck-Ups Of Javic Piotr Thane is produced some time near the end of the Universe, threatening to execute a man if he refuses to murder his own lover will be near the top of it because really, by then wasn’t Ianto damaged enough for anyone? Was there really a need to break him even more, just because he was pissed that this pretty, know-nothing boy from 21st century Wales had managed to con him?

“Let him go!” Tosh says.

“I’m not going to harm him,” Jack says, keeping his tone the same and the other two have their eyes fixed on Tosh and Ianto slides closer.

“Why should I believe you?” Tosh cries and her hands are shaking and the tension is ratcheting up.

“Tosh,” Owen says and he’s desperate to resolve this, to help her. “Tosh, we can talk about this.” She looks at him and the gun starts to swing his way before she registers the greater threat and returns aim to Jack and she’s about to snap and Ianto moves forward again, readying himself as his eyes flick to Owen and Gwen and then back to Tosh.

“Drop the gun, Jack!” and they all know she’s going to shoot and then Ianto moves with a speed that blindsides Tosh and he shoves the gun down, grabbing her other wrist in one hand.

Gwen shouts something but Ianto doesn’t take it in, he’s focusing on keeping the gun down and pointing away from the others. On any other day he’d have twisted a leg behind her foot and used his own weight to bear her down to the ground but he does not want to do that today and so he tightens his hold on her wrists, twisting them both round even though he really doesn’t want to hurt her, and she’s screaming at him as he gets the gun from her hand.

“Don’t! Get off me!” and then she screams Adam’s name and if they hadn’t already realised that they need to retcon Adam from existence, he’d be willing to literally beg Jack on his knees for the damn stuff. This, what has happened these last few minutes, is reminding him far too much of the night he re-lives over and over again in his nightmares. And Jack’s voice harsh with anger is yet another reminder, even though this time that rage is directed at someone else.

“This is what you’ve done to us! Move!”

Owen comes forward as Tosh twists in his grip and Ianto eases his hold and she shoves at them both, pushing them away from her as she sobs. Gwen has pulled her own gun but she’s watching wide-eyed and nervous, not aiming at any of them so hopefully this time it won’t end in a bloodbath because he thinks that will finally drive him mad.

“Adam!” Tosh is sobbing and screaming and as Jack vanishes down the stairs, Owen tries to touch her again and she pushes him away so hard he staggers back. Ianto ejects her clip onto the floor and dumps her gun onto her abandoned desk before moving towards her. She turns to him, face ugly with rage and hate, lashing out. He catches her wrist in his left hand before the slap connects, pulling her towards him and around so her back is right in front of him. Gwen hesitates, looking shocked, as she goes to holster her gun and he grabs Tosh’s shoulder in his free hand and propels her the few steps to the CCTV banks.

“Quiet!” he snaps at them all, because Tosh is sobbing and Owen is loudly disapproving of his aggressive behaviour and though Gwen’s put the gun away, she looks like she’s about to start one of her bloody tirades - presumably about what just happened to Adam - and he really Just. Can’t. Fucking. Deal. with it right now. He lets go of Tosh’s wrist and calls up the CCTV, aware of his hands shaking again as he does so. The various time-stamps will be burned into his brain until Jack grants him the release of Retcon.

He doesn’t watch, and he tries not to listen, as the CCTV shows what Adam did to him and shame floods through him at the knowledge that he didn’t do more to fight the man off. He remembers trying to crawl away; remembers no, please! and arms around him and Adam kissing him and holding him and touching him and his mind reeling and not being able to do anything to stop him. He should have done more, he should have tried harder.

By the time the CCTV shows Adam rising and walking away, leaving him cowering and sobbing on the Hub floor, Gwen has a hand clapped to her mouth and her eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them. Owen’s mouth has dropped open and he’s shaking his head, horror written all over his face. Tosh is shaking from head to foot, hands clenched together at her chest. Unable to open his mouth for fear of screaming again, Ianto reaches over Tosh’s shoulder and calls up those other little incidents. A year ago today…you remembered and Do you remember that? and Just ‘cause that’s what I said to you on your first day, remember? And then the recording of Adam appearing from nowhere, and the way he first placed himself in each of their memories.

He turns off the recordings and there is quiet, though Tosh is sobbing softly. He puts his hand on her shoulder for a moment, trying to offer sympathy and comfort. They’ve both loved someone who put them all in danger; both been betrayed by someone they loved, both been Adam’s victims. He looks at Owen.

“Take her up to the conference room. Jack won’t be long,” he says softly, because it seems the obvious thing that Jack will want to do - to gather them together and keep them in one place while Adam’s tampering is undone. Owen nods slowly.

“Yes, yes….umm… come along Tosh, love…..let’s get you….” His voice tails off and he begins to guide Tosh towards the stairs, arm around her shoulders and the other hand gently clasping her arm.

Gwen turns to Ianto, reaching a hand out to him with That Look on her face and he steps back almost as fast as he drew back from Adam. Because while that’s the look that makes Jack wax lyrical about her humanity, he hates seeing it. It incites nothing from him but the urge to shut down, shut her out. He chooses who he lets in, and how far. Gwen assumes that she can buy her way in with nothing more than a smile. He’s beyond grateful that Jack kept her from his door during his suspension because he’s not sure he could have coped if she’d turned up with That Look on her face after helping to destroy his world. It still rankles, deep down. That she railed against Jack for letting the child Jasmine go with the fairies; and prated about how Beth deserved to be saved even as the poor bewildered woman was gathering intel to help with an invasion - yet she has never shown a flicker of remorse or regret for Lisa. The only time the word even passed her lips was when he shoved Lisa’s death in all their faces. Ianto, I’m sorry…..Sorry she’s dead, or sorry you mentioned it?....I just didn’t think…..You forgot….. Jack had begun to rip into him verbally after Gwen fled with her tail between her legs - until Tosh had turned around and shocked them both by laying into Jack in turn. Just how that would have played out no-one ever found out, because before Jack could reply the other two had come tearing back to let them know about the body.

Her mouth opens and he knows she’s about to call him sweetheart and he hates it when she does that. God, did Lisa hate it when he called her that?

“Ianto, sweet…”

“Why don’t you go with them?” he cuts in. “I’m sure Tosh could do with some company.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Start deleting the evidence.”

“What? Why?”

He manages not to roll his eyes but he has to bite his lip to stop the first response that tries to come out. Why do you bloody think, Cooper?

“We have to forget,” he says instead. Like I’m remembering a man who doesn’t exist and Adam’s hand flickering in and out of reality.

“Is that what Jack thinks?” And there’s that note in her voice: the one that means she thinks he’s taking on authority she doesn’t believe he has, stepping outside what she thinks his job involves. Not that she has ever grasped the full extent of what his job is. Not before his suspension, and certainly not now. None of the three of them do, on Jack’s orders. They can’t know. They wouldn’t understand, Ianto. Gwen starts to turn towards the stairs.

“I’ll just go down and ask Jack what he wants m..us to do.”

“Gwen,” Ianto tries to keep himself calm, tries to remind himself that Gwen is also a victim and that she has also suffered as a direct result of Adam’s manipulations. To forget Rhys and have them all telling her that he was her fiancé must have been terrifying. But that doesn’t cover why she always seems to feel the need to double-check every fucking thing he tells her. A sodding year with Torchwood and she thinks she’s the expert. It was the same even before he let her think she was leading the team while Jack away. That’s not right. Adam led us while Jack was….NO. No, that’s fake. Christ Jack - bloody hurry up will you?

“Jack and I realised that if…” He glances towards the stairs, checking that Owen and Tosh are out of sight and hearing. “If Adam needs to put himself into our memories to exist, then if we remove him from our memories, we’ll get rid of him. And the quicker the better, so we lose as little time as possible.”

“Oh,” she says and shifts from foot to foot. Then:- “You mean retcon.”

“Unless you know some other method?” and there’s more of a snap to his words than he meant there to be but right now he’s struggling to keep the usual imperturbable mask in place. He takes a deep breath, reminding himself again that she’s also under stress and that she never means actual harm. Doesn’t stop her fucking doing it though.

“Well, what about me? I’m immune to retcon.”

Deep breaths, Ianto. Deep breaths. “Gwen, you shook off one dose of a very specific variation - and I doubt you’d have successfully done that if Cos….. if Suzie hadn’t cracked and waved that glove in your face.” She looks shocked. Has he just shattered some sort of ‘I’m special I am’ idea she had? “All Jack was trying to do was wipe us from your memory.” If he’s honest with himself, he’s not even sure Jack was trying very hard. Level 1 retcon is not the usual variety for deleting memories of Torchwood, and he’d had his suspicions of Jack’s plans for PC Cooper at the time. But he had other far more pressing things on his mind then, even before Costello went and triggered Gwen’s memories before blowing her brains out right in front of the woman. Two doses of retcon one on top of each other can have nasty side-effects, so Jack had a convenient excuse for bringing her on-board. He’s never been quite sure why Jack hasn’t caught one of the many lures Gwen has thrown his way. He’s fairly sure that Jack won’t, not now, but he’s dreading the upcoming wedding.

“This time we’ll be deleting entire time-frames, not just memory threads. You won’t break it this time. Trust me - it’s my job.” He closes his mouth firmly on the word remember. She’s staring at him with the same kind of blank look she gives Tosh or Owen when they’re being technical and he clamps down on the irritation. She never does bother with those parts of Torchwood’s work that don’t interest her - and quite how he pulls off their cover-ups has never interested her, save when she tries to pretend moral superiority because she isn’t involved in them.

“I’m going to make sure we don’t have any reminders,” he says. “Why don’t you go and see how Tosh is?”

She catches her breath. “Oh God - Tosh. She must feel….” She swallows and suddenly he sees the cop, the female cop who must have dealt with so many rape victims; and for all his problems with her, he can see that she was probably very capable. She nods and turns away without another word and as she hurries up the stairs, Ianto realises that they’re going to have to say something to Rhys. Your fiancée waving a knife at you and not remembering your name is not something you’re going to forget to ask her about. Should he call Rhys in, retcon him? Deciding to leave Jack to make that call, he kills the live CCTV recording, setting it to start again at nine, then begins work.

There are too many images of Adam to remove only them - even with his skills at this, a geriatric would be able to spot the gaping holes it would leave. They’re going to have to delete everything, so he begins to move the last 48 hours into a different part of the server, checking it for information that might have to somehow be saved as he does. Fortunately, Sunday apparently had been fairly quiet (which agrees with his memories) and Owen left just after two (which he also remembers) and Tosh left alone shortly before three. His memory tells him she left with Adam as she always does, so at least the CCTV reveals Adam only spent one night in Tosh’s bed, not two. He doesn’t suppose telling her that is going to make her feel any happier about having been essentially raped.

For himself, it turns out he went home at four - which he remembers doing, although watching himself leave without a backward glance or a last visit to Jack’s office seems…strange, somehow. Jack and Adam look to have talked the night through. The CCTV shows them sitting next to each other on the sofa, Adam frequently touching Jack’s shoulder or leg and he wonders grimly how many of Jack’s memories Adam adjusted.

He works his way through the other files, removing every trace of Adam and as much as he can of the last two days. Finally, he pulls up the live feed from the vaults. Jack is just outside the cell he put Adam in, standing close to the clear door and glaring in at the prisoner.

“All those extraordinary memories you hold,” Adam is saying. “Some hidden, some absent.” And Ianto realises that there are parts of Jack that he does not know but that Adam is fully aware of. Things Jack has shared with Adam that he will never share with Ianto and for a moment he feels a flicker of anger towards Jack. Then he feels ashamed - the sharing of some of those memories was tricked from him, just as Tosh’s love was; and the sharing of others was as forced onto the other man as his own memories were forced onto him.

Jack has turned to leave, he realises, and Adam throws a last taunt after him.

“You always remember what you killed. Don’t you, Jack?” And as Jack freezes for a moment, Adam’s gaze flicks up to the camera and it’s as though he’s looking right into Ianto’s eyes.

Continued in Chapter 4: https://criccieth.livejournal.com/18965.html