Ferals (2/6)
Title: Ferals (2/6)
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Steven, Alice, Gwen, Martha, Mickey, OCs
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Martha/Mickey, past Jack/others, past Ianto/OMC
Rating: for adults only
Words: 31,800 (3400 this part)
Warnings: suicide, character death including child death, gore and violence
Spoilers: plot spoilers through CoE, (very) brief mention of characters and events from MD, some parts based on early spoilers from the current season of DW, but finished before the season premiere aired
Beta: Eldar and fide_et_spe both kicked this into shape, and have my deepest thanks.
Summary: Ianto and Steven have returned home, but as Ianto tries to solve an alien's murder, he learns home isn't ready to take them back.
A/N: Sequel to Strays and Rescues. eldarwannabe did a lot of heavy lifting in breaking this fic, and without her, it would not exist. If you like it, tell her thank you.
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
He's unsurprised that Jack won't let Ianto accompany him to the Hub after the earliest train of the morning brings them back to Cardiff. He is surprised by the sudden rage the refusal instils.
"I'm your only witness. I'm a good witness because I'm not going to try to explain away what I saw. Why can't I help you on the case?"
"It's not a case. One alien killed another, we cleaned the scene. That's all." Jack's got his keys.
"It wasn't an alien."
Jack hesitates. "All right. Let's go over it again. Can you describe the assailant?" Ianto prickles, thinking he's being made fun of, but for once, Jack appears to be open, unconsciously (or not) copying Gwen's standard 'Tell me more' stance.
"He was about my height. Definitely human." He doesn't know why he's positive, but he is.
"What did he look like?"
Ianto had this same trouble last night. "It was dark, I didn't get a good look at his face. He was wearing a hood."
"A cloak or a hoodie?"
The picture in his memory is mottled with deceptive white and orange streetlamps and the reflected wet green-grey glare of alleys. "I'm not sure."
"I'll write all that down, then." There's the light teasing again, and it burns.
"Let me go in with you."
"You don't work there." Jack kisses him on the cheek, too fast for Ianto to dodge. "I'll see you tonight."
It takes all his self-control not to put his fist through the door or throw something against a wall. He doesn't watch Jack go, and he doesn't admit to the wave of sadness overtaking the anger.
He does grab his mobile and he dials Mickey's number.
***
He spends the rest of the day drafting his curriculum vitae. Jack won't hear of him working for Torchwood, because Jack is a self-absorbed idiot who doesn't understand anything, so Ianto will apply for law enforcement and underwater drilling jobs, anything where his life will be endangered on a daily basis. He's aware that he's being childish, but he spends a good ten minutes fantasising about dying tragically on the job, never mind he's done that once already.
When he has a decent CV together, knowing Torchwood and the Mr. Copper Foundation will back him up with any reasonable claim, Ianto begins scanning jobs websites and placement agencies. He applies for PA positions, customer service, and anything remotely having to do with archiving. The local bookshops are starting their interviewing process for the upcoming holiday season -- they do this earlier and earlier every year -- and he decides to dress the part and hand in his application directly.
The first shop takes his CV and lets him know they'll be in touch.
At the second, his ex is midway through a signing.
Ianto reads the name on the board twice, but there aren't two Richard Howards writing science fiction novels. He buys a copy of the newest book and he shuffles his way through the line just to see the surprise on Richard's face.
"You're doing much better," Richard says forty minutes later, as they slide into a booth at the restaurant next door. The signing went well, with Ianto picking up smoothly as an assistant. He'll be able to walk into a job at that shop if he chooses. It's a good feeling, knowing someone somewhere wants him around.
Catching Richard's undisguised glances, the shop manager isn't the only one who wants Ianto around. He's flattered, and also sad. He hides both beneath a pleasant, thin smile.
"I am. Healed up, getting back on my feet."
"How's Steven?"
"He's back with his mother."
Richard's eyes flicker down to the menu. "You told me she died. But you told me a lot of things."
Ianto told him that his name was Nathan, that Steven's mother had died, that he was a librarian, that his own family was all gone. He'd sprinkled lies into every conversation, flavouring the new life he tried to create. "I had to. I'm sorry."
"Why did you take him?" His voice stays low, yearning for a truth he's not sure he wants. "I talked to the police over and over. Those people came to my house asking questions. They found you?"
Ianto nods, and he sits back until the waiter has taken their orders. "The whole thing was a huge mix-up. We were relocating with extended family, and there was an accident. We couldn't find them after, and they thought we'd been killed." He's been practising this lie, working the details over in his mind. "Steven and I aren't legally related, but I couldn't bear the thought of losing him, too." He floats that bone of truth amid the rest. All his best tales have been stewed together this way.
"They didn't recognise your picture."
Ianto shrugs. "Kids grow fast. I changed my hair and lost some weight. And again, they were all convinced we'd died. Jack's apologised a million times since."
He remembers the first apology, as Jack traced the outline of the TARDIS key safely tied around Ianto's neck, one hesitant fingertip drawing the shape over his bare chest. The second was embossed with a kiss at his temple. They both stopped counting after three.
"Jack's the American?" The wistful tone is far too familiar.
"He's from all over, but yes, that's Jack." Mild guilt stabs at him. "Excuse me." Ianto takes out his mobile and types a quick text, letting Jack know he's at dinner with Richard and adding that Richard is not coming home with them so don't ask.
"I wish you'd told me. I could have helped." Behind his glasses, Richard is already telling himself the story. He would have figured out a way to reunite Ianto and Steven with their family. He would have protected them from the police, and the alien underworld, and the gunshot. In his fantasies, he's a hero. It's all over his face. Ianto has always been aware the two of them have a lot in common.
"Or you'd have been in danger as well. It all worked out. We're home now, and if you hadn't spoken to the police, we wouldn't be. So you did help."
Richard glows under the implied praise. "Do you think I could say hello to Steven whilst I'm in town?"
"He doesn't live in Cardiff. He's about an hour away."
"I've got my car. We could take a trip."
"I don't think that would be a good idea." He watches the hopeful expression crumple on Richard's face. Showing up on Alice's doorstep with his ex-boyfriend cannot lead anywhere good for anyone. Showing up with his current boyfriend wouldn't be much better. "It's complicated."
"All right. You can tell him I said hello."
Their drinks arrive with the starter, bruschetta with sun-dried tomato pesto. Ianto pushes the conversation back onto Richard, asking him about the new book he's writing, gossiping about the people they both knew. He's had more comfortable conversations, but this is hardly the most unusual relationship he's had to end. Ianto dawdles over the company as much as he does the food (he opted for the Chef's pie, Richard ordered the only salad on the menu without chicken or prawns). He's recalling too clearly the cranberry taste of this man's mouth, the nervous yet eager stroke of his hands. There is no room for regret, leaving plenty for fondness and the reminders of why Richard once appeared to be a perfect break with his past.
The two all-consuming loves of Ianto's life were cast into high relief against Richard like crisp shadows straining over snow. Lisa almost killed Ianto. Jack did kill him. There's something to be treasured in a lover whose worst threat is a papercut. But a comparison in one direction invites comparison in the other. He loved Lisa with all his soul. He's frankly terrified of how much he loves Jack. He likes Richard and he could have fallen in love with him given time, but time had different plans. He's a friend, nothing more.
Ianto's mobile chirps twice, once with an acknowledgement from Jack, and voicemail from Sally he can check later.
"You're not coming back, are you?" Richard's smile has dimmed over dinner.
"This is home. My life is here." Finally. Again.
"You're applying for shop assistant jobs."
"Jack's here."
Ianto hasn't wanted to admit the only thing really tying him is Jack. Rhiannon moved on after he died. Gwen's got her own life to live, Martha too. Ianto tried to get past Jack, and kept trying, and he can't. Jack can order him never to set foot on a Torchwood case again, and Ianto will hate him for it, and he will stay at Jack's side still. If Jack returns to America, Ianto won't even stop to pack.
He will, however, phone Steven.
Richard toys with his empty glass. "He didn't know who you were. I had a snap on my phone of you and Steven, and he didn't recognise your faces. Don't tell me you lost weight. You and I only dated for a few months and I'd know you twenty years from now in a different country." Passion, and hurt, fill his voice.
The flush takes him by surprise, creeping up his neck like a stroking hand. When they were together, the relationship was based on sex (not that Ianto had started any other relationships the same way) and mutual loneliness (ditto), with a little idle daydreaming about the future (Christ, is he really so predictable?). They didn't talk about love, not that Ianto's ever been good with talking about the subject. Hell, he's only told Jack the once.
Even when he didn't recognise Ianto and Steven, even when he thought they were dead, Jack spent ages trying to find them again on a hopeless quest. If he had to, he'd have searched for them for ten thousand years on another planet. And for that and for so much more, Jack's the one he's going home to tonight.
"I love him. He loves me."
The wounded expression deepens on Richard's face. "He's going to hurt you. Blokes like him always do."
He thinks of the CCTV image, Jack dashing off across the Plass to chase a blue police box. He remembers words he hadn't even admitted to himself that he wanted to hear, "I came back for you," cut into by another explanation that left him flat-footed and lost again. He remembers little moments when he knew he was the last thing on Jack's mind, and he remembers being pushed away, with jabs at the word "couple" and a very specific "Don't" when it was too late for any other words to matter.
"I know."
Ianto pays the bill when it comes, and it's an awkward goodbye after, instead of the friendly break he hoped for. He wishes he'd walked by the store. He wishes Nathan was real, someone sweet and bookish who would have fallen in love with Richard too and would not have run away. They exchange email addresses. Ianto already knows they won't write.
Jack's not home when he gets back to the flat. Ianto drops his keys on the table by the door, shrugs off his shoes and puts away his nice interviewing clothes, then runs himself a bath. The healing scar from the gunshot wound aches as he settles in, reminding him too clearly of damaged tendons and worse. Someone shot him, someone he knows, but he doesn't know which of the three discharged their gun, and he won't ask. Knowledge will change how he interacts with his friends. He's sore and sulky tonight, soaping the skin around the puckered pink scar, and despite himself he wonders.
His mobile rings. Guilt gnaws at him for two rings and he dashes out of the bath to answer. "Hello?"
"Hey." It's Mickey. Mickey might have shot him. "We dropped in on Sharky tonight to see if he knew anything."
"Thanks for that. What did he say?"
"Nothing, on account of being dead."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
'Sharky' is … was the name used by an alien who, for a not-so-modest fee, assisted other aliens as they settled in London and the surrounding area. Extraterrestrials have visited Earth for decades, perhaps even centuries, and despite Torchwood's official stance, many are no more harmful than the average gobshite on the street. Refugees from other parts of the galaxy come through the Rift, or cough along in patched-together tin spacecraft, to find sanctuary on this primitive yet thriving little green and blue world. Sharky and those like him help the newcomers find (or avoid) members of their own species and get them set up with jobs and faked papers, these refugees forming a secretive underclass who blend in as well as they can. The interest rates are pure extortion, but as Sharky used to advertise (discreetly), you can't put a price on not being dissected. Yvonne's Torchwood dogged the community, making that unnameable price very dear indeed. Jack's Torchwood has told the lot of them to keep their damn heads and pincers down and not cause trouble, or else.
Ianto went to Sharky when he needed new identification for himself and Steven. And now Sharky is dead.
"Unhappy customer?"
"Maybe. Martha's doing the autopsy tomorrow morning, and we'll know more."
"How did he die? In general?"
"Pieces everywhere, like he'd been blown up." Mickey sounds vaguely ill. "He was there for a while before we found him."
Ianto can picture the corpse too clearly. "Not good." It sounds a lot like what happened to the Parmerian. "Can I see a copy of her results when she's done?"
"Sure. We can fax the report to the Hub." There's a barb in the statement.
"I'd rather you email me."
His gambit is rewarded with a drawn-out 'Not getting in the middle of someone else's domestic issue' sigh. "Technically, I shouldn't be talking to you about this. You're not touching any Torchwood cases."
The difference between hearing the words from Mickey and from Martha is that Mickey doesn't care enough to use a nurturing-bordering-on-condescending tone. That doesn't make the experience any less humiliating.
"You're not Torchwood." A brilliant thought strikes him. "You're a freelancer. I could hire the two of you."
"You couldn't afford us."
"Mickey ... "
"I will email you the autopsy report. You do not ever tell Jack where you got it. We'll send the official report to them anyway. If this is something big, you lot will need to know."
Relief and gratitude flood him. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. Really, really never mention it. Jack will have my head."
***
Interlude
***
Alice has become far too familiar with the pattern of blue flowers on the wallpaper in the waiting room for Steven's therapist. Three times a week, she sits out here for an hour, pretending to read six-month-old magazines or work on crosswords. Most often, she avoids the eyes of others in the waiting room, and she stares at the carpet or the wall. When Steven's session is finished, she'll go in to talk with the therapist to set up the next appointment.
"He has to trust me," the woman explained at the first session, the one Alice set a day after Steven came home. Her brown hair was speckled with grey, and she looked like a retired schoolteacher, matched that same expression of having seen everything more than once. "I won't be able to gain his trust if he thinks I'm going to turn around and tell you everything. I will tell you if he's in immediate danger, if he needs a doctor or the police, but everything else Steven shares with me has to be private."
There's still so much Alice doesn't know about what happened to him. Her child died, and he came back, and he travelled a hundred miles on his own, and fled from home to home in the care of a man Alice has absolutely no reason to trust. She herself didn't recognise him when he stood in front of her, weeping. Now the impossible has happened, and she has her baby, and he hugs her and tells her he loves her, but his eyes are always in shadow, and when he's afraid, he calls Ianto.
Worse, and it's a secret shameful thing to think of as worse, she can feel her own memories muddling, like her father has been slipping her his little pills. Alice wouldn't put him past it, except he'd have to be dosing everyone she knows. Steven died, but his school friends tease him for being held back a year. (None of them recall the memorial the school held, and when her tearful child reminds them, they mutter it off.) The Doctor came, a figure from Alice's childhood fairy tales, and now time has been put back wrong, and she is struggling to remember what's real. Did the world really go through a period where no-one could die? It's like a dream she's not meant to remember, a night terror put swiftly out of mind.
Today the therapist's inner door opens a few minutes early by the clock on the wall. Steven drags out, face pinched and shuttered. He was so happy to be home, and now he twitches at every noise. He wakes from screaming nightmares, and sobs while still asleep: "She's gone." Dark circles line his eyes, deeper today than yesterday.
Afraid of all these things and refusing to show her fear, Alice kisses his hair and goes in, leaving the door ajar. She doesn't like to be away from him.
The therapist offers Alice a chair. "I don't think we're making progress."
Alice twists the hem of her shirt in her hands. "How bad is he?"
"I wish I could say. Steven's a bright little boy. He comes in, he plays games with me, we talk. But he won't tell me about the time he was missing. Except one thing."
"What?" Her mouth feels numb, like she's licked Novacaine.
"He's invented a narrative that he died. Whatever happened to him, he's shoved the experience away in his mind, and locked it up tight. He's telling himself he was dead so he doesn't have to face what happened. You can't be hurt when you're dead."
But he did die, Alice opens her mouth to say. She can't get the words past her teeth. "In his story, he comes back from the dead," she allows, slowly. "What about then?"
The therapist shakes her head. "He won't say more than the most basic details. He travelled with a friend of yours, he came home."
"He's not my friend," Alice says too quickly, and she can see the therapist turn her attention. Alice's own therapist uses this same expression.
"Mrs. Carter, I am here to help your son. Do you have any information I should know? Are you sure Mr. Jones didn't abduct Steven himself?"
"I'm absolutely positive."
"But you don't trust him."
She doesn't. It's as simple and wretched as that. She wants to believe that Ianto took Steven in and kept him safe. Certainly her own embarrassing encounter with them on her front step proved he was taking better care of Steven than she could have with her eyes clouded by the perception filter. But her son lived with a stranger whose sole kinship to either of them was via the man who'd murdered Steven. The day Ianto was released from hospital, he went back to Jack's bed. Alice doesn't dare trust his word.
When she fails to answer, the therapist asks, "How much contact does Steven have with Mr. Jones?"
"Steven calls him every night."
"I think, for your own peace of mind, you should limit the calls. It's possible he's the one who encouraged Steven to make up the story about his death. Giving Steven more distance from his influence may allow him to remember on his own what really happened."
What really happened was that he died. He remembers clearly. But Alice will try anything to help him get past his death, get past whatever hurt him after he came back to life.
"I'll do that."
***
Chapter Three
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Steven, Alice, Gwen, Martha, Mickey, OCs
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Martha/Mickey, past Jack/others, past Ianto/OMC
Rating: for adults only
Words: 31,800 (3400 this part)
Warnings: suicide, character death including child death, gore and violence
Spoilers: plot spoilers through CoE, (very) brief mention of characters and events from MD, some parts based on early spoilers from the current season of DW, but finished before the season premiere aired
Beta: Eldar and fide_et_spe both kicked this into shape, and have my deepest thanks.
Summary: Ianto and Steven have returned home, but as Ianto tries to solve an alien's murder, he learns home isn't ready to take them back.
A/N: Sequel to Strays and Rescues. eldarwannabe did a lot of heavy lifting in breaking this fic, and without her, it would not exist. If you like it, tell her thank you.
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
He's unsurprised that Jack won't let Ianto accompany him to the Hub after the earliest train of the morning brings them back to Cardiff. He is surprised by the sudden rage the refusal instils.
"I'm your only witness. I'm a good witness because I'm not going to try to explain away what I saw. Why can't I help you on the case?"
"It's not a case. One alien killed another, we cleaned the scene. That's all." Jack's got his keys.
"It wasn't an alien."
Jack hesitates. "All right. Let's go over it again. Can you describe the assailant?" Ianto prickles, thinking he's being made fun of, but for once, Jack appears to be open, unconsciously (or not) copying Gwen's standard 'Tell me more' stance.
"He was about my height. Definitely human." He doesn't know why he's positive, but he is.
"What did he look like?"
Ianto had this same trouble last night. "It was dark, I didn't get a good look at his face. He was wearing a hood."
"A cloak or a hoodie?"
The picture in his memory is mottled with deceptive white and orange streetlamps and the reflected wet green-grey glare of alleys. "I'm not sure."
"I'll write all that down, then." There's the light teasing again, and it burns.
"Let me go in with you."
"You don't work there." Jack kisses him on the cheek, too fast for Ianto to dodge. "I'll see you tonight."
It takes all his self-control not to put his fist through the door or throw something against a wall. He doesn't watch Jack go, and he doesn't admit to the wave of sadness overtaking the anger.
He does grab his mobile and he dials Mickey's number.
***
He spends the rest of the day drafting his curriculum vitae. Jack won't hear of him working for Torchwood, because Jack is a self-absorbed idiot who doesn't understand anything, so Ianto will apply for law enforcement and underwater drilling jobs, anything where his life will be endangered on a daily basis. He's aware that he's being childish, but he spends a good ten minutes fantasising about dying tragically on the job, never mind he's done that once already.
When he has a decent CV together, knowing Torchwood and the Mr. Copper Foundation will back him up with any reasonable claim, Ianto begins scanning jobs websites and placement agencies. He applies for PA positions, customer service, and anything remotely having to do with archiving. The local bookshops are starting their interviewing process for the upcoming holiday season -- they do this earlier and earlier every year -- and he decides to dress the part and hand in his application directly.
The first shop takes his CV and lets him know they'll be in touch.
At the second, his ex is midway through a signing.
Ianto reads the name on the board twice, but there aren't two Richard Howards writing science fiction novels. He buys a copy of the newest book and he shuffles his way through the line just to see the surprise on Richard's face.
"You're doing much better," Richard says forty minutes later, as they slide into a booth at the restaurant next door. The signing went well, with Ianto picking up smoothly as an assistant. He'll be able to walk into a job at that shop if he chooses. It's a good feeling, knowing someone somewhere wants him around.
Catching Richard's undisguised glances, the shop manager isn't the only one who wants Ianto around. He's flattered, and also sad. He hides both beneath a pleasant, thin smile.
"I am. Healed up, getting back on my feet."
"How's Steven?"
"He's back with his mother."
Richard's eyes flicker down to the menu. "You told me she died. But you told me a lot of things."
Ianto told him that his name was Nathan, that Steven's mother had died, that he was a librarian, that his own family was all gone. He'd sprinkled lies into every conversation, flavouring the new life he tried to create. "I had to. I'm sorry."
"Why did you take him?" His voice stays low, yearning for a truth he's not sure he wants. "I talked to the police over and over. Those people came to my house asking questions. They found you?"
Ianto nods, and he sits back until the waiter has taken their orders. "The whole thing was a huge mix-up. We were relocating with extended family, and there was an accident. We couldn't find them after, and they thought we'd been killed." He's been practising this lie, working the details over in his mind. "Steven and I aren't legally related, but I couldn't bear the thought of losing him, too." He floats that bone of truth amid the rest. All his best tales have been stewed together this way.
"They didn't recognise your picture."
Ianto shrugs. "Kids grow fast. I changed my hair and lost some weight. And again, they were all convinced we'd died. Jack's apologised a million times since."
He remembers the first apology, as Jack traced the outline of the TARDIS key safely tied around Ianto's neck, one hesitant fingertip drawing the shape over his bare chest. The second was embossed with a kiss at his temple. They both stopped counting after three.
"Jack's the American?" The wistful tone is far too familiar.
"He's from all over, but yes, that's Jack." Mild guilt stabs at him. "Excuse me." Ianto takes out his mobile and types a quick text, letting Jack know he's at dinner with Richard and adding that Richard is not coming home with them so don't ask.
"I wish you'd told me. I could have helped." Behind his glasses, Richard is already telling himself the story. He would have figured out a way to reunite Ianto and Steven with their family. He would have protected them from the police, and the alien underworld, and the gunshot. In his fantasies, he's a hero. It's all over his face. Ianto has always been aware the two of them have a lot in common.
"Or you'd have been in danger as well. It all worked out. We're home now, and if you hadn't spoken to the police, we wouldn't be. So you did help."
Richard glows under the implied praise. "Do you think I could say hello to Steven whilst I'm in town?"
"He doesn't live in Cardiff. He's about an hour away."
"I've got my car. We could take a trip."
"I don't think that would be a good idea." He watches the hopeful expression crumple on Richard's face. Showing up on Alice's doorstep with his ex-boyfriend cannot lead anywhere good for anyone. Showing up with his current boyfriend wouldn't be much better. "It's complicated."
"All right. You can tell him I said hello."
Their drinks arrive with the starter, bruschetta with sun-dried tomato pesto. Ianto pushes the conversation back onto Richard, asking him about the new book he's writing, gossiping about the people they both knew. He's had more comfortable conversations, but this is hardly the most unusual relationship he's had to end. Ianto dawdles over the company as much as he does the food (he opted for the Chef's pie, Richard ordered the only salad on the menu without chicken or prawns). He's recalling too clearly the cranberry taste of this man's mouth, the nervous yet eager stroke of his hands. There is no room for regret, leaving plenty for fondness and the reminders of why Richard once appeared to be a perfect break with his past.
The two all-consuming loves of Ianto's life were cast into high relief against Richard like crisp shadows straining over snow. Lisa almost killed Ianto. Jack did kill him. There's something to be treasured in a lover whose worst threat is a papercut. But a comparison in one direction invites comparison in the other. He loved Lisa with all his soul. He's frankly terrified of how much he loves Jack. He likes Richard and he could have fallen in love with him given time, but time had different plans. He's a friend, nothing more.
Ianto's mobile chirps twice, once with an acknowledgement from Jack, and voicemail from Sally he can check later.
"You're not coming back, are you?" Richard's smile has dimmed over dinner.
"This is home. My life is here." Finally. Again.
"You're applying for shop assistant jobs."
"Jack's here."
Ianto hasn't wanted to admit the only thing really tying him is Jack. Rhiannon moved on after he died. Gwen's got her own life to live, Martha too. Ianto tried to get past Jack, and kept trying, and he can't. Jack can order him never to set foot on a Torchwood case again, and Ianto will hate him for it, and he will stay at Jack's side still. If Jack returns to America, Ianto won't even stop to pack.
He will, however, phone Steven.
Richard toys with his empty glass. "He didn't know who you were. I had a snap on my phone of you and Steven, and he didn't recognise your faces. Don't tell me you lost weight. You and I only dated for a few months and I'd know you twenty years from now in a different country." Passion, and hurt, fill his voice.
The flush takes him by surprise, creeping up his neck like a stroking hand. When they were together, the relationship was based on sex (not that Ianto had started any other relationships the same way) and mutual loneliness (ditto), with a little idle daydreaming about the future (Christ, is he really so predictable?). They didn't talk about love, not that Ianto's ever been good with talking about the subject. Hell, he's only told Jack the once.
Even when he didn't recognise Ianto and Steven, even when he thought they were dead, Jack spent ages trying to find them again on a hopeless quest. If he had to, he'd have searched for them for ten thousand years on another planet. And for that and for so much more, Jack's the one he's going home to tonight.
"I love him. He loves me."
The wounded expression deepens on Richard's face. "He's going to hurt you. Blokes like him always do."
He thinks of the CCTV image, Jack dashing off across the Plass to chase a blue police box. He remembers words he hadn't even admitted to himself that he wanted to hear, "I came back for you," cut into by another explanation that left him flat-footed and lost again. He remembers little moments when he knew he was the last thing on Jack's mind, and he remembers being pushed away, with jabs at the word "couple" and a very specific "Don't" when it was too late for any other words to matter.
"I know."
Ianto pays the bill when it comes, and it's an awkward goodbye after, instead of the friendly break he hoped for. He wishes he'd walked by the store. He wishes Nathan was real, someone sweet and bookish who would have fallen in love with Richard too and would not have run away. They exchange email addresses. Ianto already knows they won't write.
Jack's not home when he gets back to the flat. Ianto drops his keys on the table by the door, shrugs off his shoes and puts away his nice interviewing clothes, then runs himself a bath. The healing scar from the gunshot wound aches as he settles in, reminding him too clearly of damaged tendons and worse. Someone shot him, someone he knows, but he doesn't know which of the three discharged their gun, and he won't ask. Knowledge will change how he interacts with his friends. He's sore and sulky tonight, soaping the skin around the puckered pink scar, and despite himself he wonders.
His mobile rings. Guilt gnaws at him for two rings and he dashes out of the bath to answer. "Hello?"
"Hey." It's Mickey. Mickey might have shot him. "We dropped in on Sharky tonight to see if he knew anything."
"Thanks for that. What did he say?"
"Nothing, on account of being dead."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
'Sharky' is … was the name used by an alien who, for a not-so-modest fee, assisted other aliens as they settled in London and the surrounding area. Extraterrestrials have visited Earth for decades, perhaps even centuries, and despite Torchwood's official stance, many are no more harmful than the average gobshite on the street. Refugees from other parts of the galaxy come through the Rift, or cough along in patched-together tin spacecraft, to find sanctuary on this primitive yet thriving little green and blue world. Sharky and those like him help the newcomers find (or avoid) members of their own species and get them set up with jobs and faked papers, these refugees forming a secretive underclass who blend in as well as they can. The interest rates are pure extortion, but as Sharky used to advertise (discreetly), you can't put a price on not being dissected. Yvonne's Torchwood dogged the community, making that unnameable price very dear indeed. Jack's Torchwood has told the lot of them to keep their damn heads and pincers down and not cause trouble, or else.
Ianto went to Sharky when he needed new identification for himself and Steven. And now Sharky is dead.
"Unhappy customer?"
"Maybe. Martha's doing the autopsy tomorrow morning, and we'll know more."
"How did he die? In general?"
"Pieces everywhere, like he'd been blown up." Mickey sounds vaguely ill. "He was there for a while before we found him."
Ianto can picture the corpse too clearly. "Not good." It sounds a lot like what happened to the Parmerian. "Can I see a copy of her results when she's done?"
"Sure. We can fax the report to the Hub." There's a barb in the statement.
"I'd rather you email me."
His gambit is rewarded with a drawn-out 'Not getting in the middle of someone else's domestic issue' sigh. "Technically, I shouldn't be talking to you about this. You're not touching any Torchwood cases."
The difference between hearing the words from Mickey and from Martha is that Mickey doesn't care enough to use a nurturing-bordering-on-condescending tone. That doesn't make the experience any less humiliating.
"You're not Torchwood." A brilliant thought strikes him. "You're a freelancer. I could hire the two of you."
"You couldn't afford us."
"Mickey ... "
"I will email you the autopsy report. You do not ever tell Jack where you got it. We'll send the official report to them anyway. If this is something big, you lot will need to know."
Relief and gratitude flood him. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. Really, really never mention it. Jack will have my head."
***
Interlude
***
Alice has become far too familiar with the pattern of blue flowers on the wallpaper in the waiting room for Steven's therapist. Three times a week, she sits out here for an hour, pretending to read six-month-old magazines or work on crosswords. Most often, she avoids the eyes of others in the waiting room, and she stares at the carpet or the wall. When Steven's session is finished, she'll go in to talk with the therapist to set up the next appointment.
"He has to trust me," the woman explained at the first session, the one Alice set a day after Steven came home. Her brown hair was speckled with grey, and she looked like a retired schoolteacher, matched that same expression of having seen everything more than once. "I won't be able to gain his trust if he thinks I'm going to turn around and tell you everything. I will tell you if he's in immediate danger, if he needs a doctor or the police, but everything else Steven shares with me has to be private."
There's still so much Alice doesn't know about what happened to him. Her child died, and he came back, and he travelled a hundred miles on his own, and fled from home to home in the care of a man Alice has absolutely no reason to trust. She herself didn't recognise him when he stood in front of her, weeping. Now the impossible has happened, and she has her baby, and he hugs her and tells her he loves her, but his eyes are always in shadow, and when he's afraid, he calls Ianto.
Worse, and it's a secret shameful thing to think of as worse, she can feel her own memories muddling, like her father has been slipping her his little pills. Alice wouldn't put him past it, except he'd have to be dosing everyone she knows. Steven died, but his school friends tease him for being held back a year. (None of them recall the memorial the school held, and when her tearful child reminds them, they mutter it off.) The Doctor came, a figure from Alice's childhood fairy tales, and now time has been put back wrong, and she is struggling to remember what's real. Did the world really go through a period where no-one could die? It's like a dream she's not meant to remember, a night terror put swiftly out of mind.
Today the therapist's inner door opens a few minutes early by the clock on the wall. Steven drags out, face pinched and shuttered. He was so happy to be home, and now he twitches at every noise. He wakes from screaming nightmares, and sobs while still asleep: "She's gone." Dark circles line his eyes, deeper today than yesterday.
Afraid of all these things and refusing to show her fear, Alice kisses his hair and goes in, leaving the door ajar. She doesn't like to be away from him.
The therapist offers Alice a chair. "I don't think we're making progress."
Alice twists the hem of her shirt in her hands. "How bad is he?"
"I wish I could say. Steven's a bright little boy. He comes in, he plays games with me, we talk. But he won't tell me about the time he was missing. Except one thing."
"What?" Her mouth feels numb, like she's licked Novacaine.
"He's invented a narrative that he died. Whatever happened to him, he's shoved the experience away in his mind, and locked it up tight. He's telling himself he was dead so he doesn't have to face what happened. You can't be hurt when you're dead."
But he did die, Alice opens her mouth to say. She can't get the words past her teeth. "In his story, he comes back from the dead," she allows, slowly. "What about then?"
The therapist shakes her head. "He won't say more than the most basic details. He travelled with a friend of yours, he came home."
"He's not my friend," Alice says too quickly, and she can see the therapist turn her attention. Alice's own therapist uses this same expression.
"Mrs. Carter, I am here to help your son. Do you have any information I should know? Are you sure Mr. Jones didn't abduct Steven himself?"
"I'm absolutely positive."
"But you don't trust him."
She doesn't. It's as simple and wretched as that. She wants to believe that Ianto took Steven in and kept him safe. Certainly her own embarrassing encounter with them on her front step proved he was taking better care of Steven than she could have with her eyes clouded by the perception filter. But her son lived with a stranger whose sole kinship to either of them was via the man who'd murdered Steven. The day Ianto was released from hospital, he went back to Jack's bed. Alice doesn't dare trust his word.
When she fails to answer, the therapist asks, "How much contact does Steven have with Mr. Jones?"
"Steven calls him every night."
"I think, for your own peace of mind, you should limit the calls. It's possible he's the one who encouraged Steven to make up the story about his death. Giving Steven more distance from his influence may allow him to remember on his own what really happened."
What really happened was that he died. He remembers clearly. But Alice will try anything to help him get past his death, get past whatever hurt him after he came back to life.
"I'll do that."
***
Chapter Three