Yesterday Is But Today's Memory - 15/19+Interlude
Title: Yesterday Is But Today's Memory
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Takes place post 2x05 'Adam', but mentions briefly minor info from later s2 eps. AU
Summary: It wasn’t the lost days that were really giving Ianto Jones nightmares. It was the fact that ever since, he’d suddenly been having flashes from another period of his life he’d thought was lost forever - his first ten years.
Warning: Some chapters of this fic will contain material some may find offensive. To go into more detail would be spoilery for the plot, but DO NOT READ if you are easily offended.
Thanks to: My wonderful betas morbid_sparks, cazmalfoy and angelzbabe1989, who talked me into writing this, then held my hand while I worked through the plot and filled all its holes.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Fifteen
Jack pushed some papers around on his desk aimlessly. It wasn’t even 6am yet, but he’d given up on even attempting to sleep over an hour before.
He realised with dismay that he no longer knew how to sleep even for a few hours without Ianto being there.
Ianto…
He wondered if the younger man was managing to sleep, or if he was lying awake, staring at the ceiling like Jack had been doing earlier.
Ianto had crumpled to the floor when the DNA results had been revealed, and Jack had nearly found himself on the floor next to him.
As it turned out, blind hope wasn’t too effective a method for changing DNA profile results to say what you wanted them to. They had been crystal clear, and even an idiot couldn’t have missed that Jack’s profile and Ianto’s new KamiTab-less profile shared more than enough genetic markers to mark them out as siblings.
None of them had known quite what to say; Ianto and Jack had both been in shock, and John had just seemed uncomfortable.
Despite this, John had been the one to finally break the silence. “So, uh… I should be getting going. Places to see, people to do and all that.” He dug into a pocket and pulled out another blister pack, this one a different colour to the other. He tossed it onto the table in the medical bay and took a step back. “That’s the KamiTab, when you want it.”
He’d all but run up the short flight of stairs into the rest of the Hub, hastily pressing a sequence of numbers into his wriststrap as he went.
Jack didn’t blame him one bit. If he could have escaped from the situation himself he would have. He wished there was a way both he and Ianto could escape from it, actually - some way they could go back to how it was before; some way to make none of this be true.
Ianto had found his feet barely minutes after John had disappeared, still unable to look at Jack as he grabbed the blister pack of KamiTab from the table. He had paused for just a second, as if he was considering saying something, but had said nothing, following John’s path at a run, and in silence.
Jack had busied himself tidying up the medical bay, putting away the tech they’d used and concealing all evidence of the tests they’d carried out that evening. He had studiously ignored the charts displayed on the computer screen, closing the program and putting the computer into sleep mode before leaving the medical bay.
It was the work of mere minutes to replace the CCTV footage showing John Hart’s presence with looped footage showing nothing of interest. Toshiko, he knew, could probably still find the original images if she put her mind to it, but he hoped he hadn’t left anything that would stir her suspicions enough to make her look.
Confident that there wasn’t anything that would seem immediately out of place when the team got into work in the morning, he had grabbed his coat and headed out of the Hub himself.
The roof on top of the Millennium Centre was one of his favourite places to stand and ponder the vagaries of life and death, and with good reason - usually by the time he’d spent some time up there watching Cardiff quietly go about its business, whatever problem was bothering him didn’t seem so hard to deal with.
He’d spent nearly two hours up there, staring by turns at the city below and the stars above, before coming to the conclusion that it just wasn’t going to help. He’d been just as confused and lost when he returned to the Hub as he’d been when he first climbed up there.
He’d stripped off and climbed down into his little bunker to try to sleep, but getting any real rest had proved impossible.
At least he could use the extra time to catch up on some of the paperwork he was, as always, behind on, but he just couldn’t concentrate. He tried to think of anything else at all, but his mind was inexorably drawn back to Ianto, to Gray…to the fact that they were one and the same.
He still didn’t want to believe it, despite the proof they’d been confronted with the night before. Didn’t want to accept it. If he accepted it, then that meant it had really happened, and he didn’t really know what to do with that.
The cog door rolled open, sirens blaring, just before 7.30am. Jack looked up from his contemplation of the grain on his desk to see who it was, surprised at how much time had passed while he steadfastly just didn’t think.
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when Tosh, not Ianto, walked through.
I know some of you might not like that the story has gone this direction, but I DID WARN YOU
Chapter Sixteen
Comments and concrit welcomed - comments are love!! &hearts
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Takes place post 2x05 'Adam', but mentions briefly minor info from later s2 eps. AU
Summary: It wasn’t the lost days that were really giving Ianto Jones nightmares. It was the fact that ever since, he’d suddenly been having flashes from another period of his life he’d thought was lost forever - his first ten years.
Warning: Some chapters of this fic will contain material some may find offensive. To go into more detail would be spoilery for the plot, but DO NOT READ if you are easily offended.
Thanks to: My wonderful betas morbid_sparks, cazmalfoy and angelzbabe1989, who talked me into writing this, then held my hand while I worked through the plot and filled all its holes.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Fifteen
Jack pushed some papers around on his desk aimlessly. It wasn’t even 6am yet, but he’d given up on even attempting to sleep over an hour before.
He realised with dismay that he no longer knew how to sleep even for a few hours without Ianto being there.
Ianto…
He wondered if the younger man was managing to sleep, or if he was lying awake, staring at the ceiling like Jack had been doing earlier.
Ianto had crumpled to the floor when the DNA results had been revealed, and Jack had nearly found himself on the floor next to him.
As it turned out, blind hope wasn’t too effective a method for changing DNA profile results to say what you wanted them to. They had been crystal clear, and even an idiot couldn’t have missed that Jack’s profile and Ianto’s new KamiTab-less profile shared more than enough genetic markers to mark them out as siblings.
None of them had known quite what to say; Ianto and Jack had both been in shock, and John had just seemed uncomfortable.
Despite this, John had been the one to finally break the silence. “So, uh… I should be getting going. Places to see, people to do and all that.” He dug into a pocket and pulled out another blister pack, this one a different colour to the other. He tossed it onto the table in the medical bay and took a step back. “That’s the KamiTab, when you want it.”
He’d all but run up the short flight of stairs into the rest of the Hub, hastily pressing a sequence of numbers into his wriststrap as he went.
Jack didn’t blame him one bit. If he could have escaped from the situation himself he would have. He wished there was a way both he and Ianto could escape from it, actually - some way they could go back to how it was before; some way to make none of this be true.
Ianto had found his feet barely minutes after John had disappeared, still unable to look at Jack as he grabbed the blister pack of KamiTab from the table. He had paused for just a second, as if he was considering saying something, but had said nothing, following John’s path at a run, and in silence.
Jack had busied himself tidying up the medical bay, putting away the tech they’d used and concealing all evidence of the tests they’d carried out that evening. He had studiously ignored the charts displayed on the computer screen, closing the program and putting the computer into sleep mode before leaving the medical bay.
It was the work of mere minutes to replace the CCTV footage showing John Hart’s presence with looped footage showing nothing of interest. Toshiko, he knew, could probably still find the original images if she put her mind to it, but he hoped he hadn’t left anything that would stir her suspicions enough to make her look.
Confident that there wasn’t anything that would seem immediately out of place when the team got into work in the morning, he had grabbed his coat and headed out of the Hub himself.
The roof on top of the Millennium Centre was one of his favourite places to stand and ponder the vagaries of life and death, and with good reason - usually by the time he’d spent some time up there watching Cardiff quietly go about its business, whatever problem was bothering him didn’t seem so hard to deal with.
He’d spent nearly two hours up there, staring by turns at the city below and the stars above, before coming to the conclusion that it just wasn’t going to help. He’d been just as confused and lost when he returned to the Hub as he’d been when he first climbed up there.
He’d stripped off and climbed down into his little bunker to try to sleep, but getting any real rest had proved impossible.
At least he could use the extra time to catch up on some of the paperwork he was, as always, behind on, but he just couldn’t concentrate. He tried to think of anything else at all, but his mind was inexorably drawn back to Ianto, to Gray…to the fact that they were one and the same.
He still didn’t want to believe it, despite the proof they’d been confronted with the night before. Didn’t want to accept it. If he accepted it, then that meant it had really happened, and he didn’t really know what to do with that.
The cog door rolled open, sirens blaring, just before 7.30am. Jack looked up from his contemplation of the grain on his desk to see who it was, surprised at how much time had passed while he steadfastly just didn’t think.
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when Tosh, not Ianto, walked through.
I know some of you might not like that the story has gone this direction, but I DID WARN YOU
Chapter Sixteen
Comments and concrit welcomed - comments are love!! &hearts