fic: SJA / TW crossover, "The Other" (5/5)
Part 4
Part 5
"Chula technology," Jack Harkness said with a sigh, leaning back on the sofa. "It's my Achilles heel. Should've had that section of the archive walled up years ago. Still, I guess this is the second time it's had me meet people worth meeting. Maybe it's not all bad."
"Your friend thinks the amnesia can be reversed?" Sarah Jane asked. They were sitting in her living room, Jack in his shirtsleeves after half an hour on the phone, relaxed and charmingly talkative now, as if the coldly brutal antagonist of a few hours ago had been a mirage. Outside, Luke, Clyde, Maria and Ianto were probably getting up to even more trouble in the ridiculous Torchwood SUV that Jack had happily unlocked for them to investigate. ("Systems are all deadlocked," he'd assured her, "and Ianto will make sure they don't press anything they shouldn't."
"Ian - Ianto - doesn't even remember what any of the buttons do!"
"Yeah, but his love for that car borders on the adulterous. You know, I ripped off the aerial once - total emergency - and he blanked me for a fortnight. I didn't even get coffee, let alone - well, you get the picture!")
The phone call had been to a Doctor Jones - in the derided UNIT, of all places. In spite of his earlier contempt, whatever he'd heard from her seemed to have put the Captain's mind at rest.
"Yeah, Martha wants to see him herself, of course, but she's pretty sure it's another Chula evac protocol, she's dealt with their hardware before. Probably something designed for search and rescue in battle - finds the wounded, teleports them out of danger and back to the triage ship to be treated."
"Except there is no Chula spaceship here on Earth."
"You got it! Whatever we had in the archive, according to the records it's been sitting there dormant for sixty years or more. A whole lot of Chula equipment found its way to Earth during both World Wars - trying to do what it was designed for, I guess. Pity most people here don't know how to use any of it."
"So," Sarah Jane said thoughtfully, "this Chula medical thing in your archives woke up, found a 'casualty' to rescue, beamed Ianto away, and then didn't have any evacuation point to send him to."
"It makes sense. The moment my bullet caught him, he was a medical priority for it - get the injured soldier out of immediate danger first and worry about what to do with him later."
"So it looked around for something that might be a Chula base - "
" - noticed a great big cloud of baryon radiation stuck to some buildings miles away but on the same landmass -"
"And rematerialised him in the Bubble Shock factory!"
"And I went looking for an object, something that might have acted as a homing beacon." Jack shook his head. "But all it did was home in something that looked like home. Like when you're lost at night and you go looking for a light, because anything light means civilisation."
"Well, a homing beacon was a logical guess." She paused. "But the amnesia, what's that - some sort of post-traumatic shock?"
"Martha doesn't think so. More likely to be the Chula equivalent of Retcon, or a medical coma, even. Put a temporary block on the patient's memories while their body recovers - it keeps them from getting stressed or agitated from their injuries, or the shock of the teleport. Don't worry, she'll figure out how to get him back."
"And if she doesn't?"
Ianto had materialised silently in the doorway. Sarah Jane jumped, but Jack didn't blink, uncoiling himself from the sofa and rising to clasp him by the shoulders.
"Don't worry! Martha's always come through for us before, right? You're going to be fine! Now -" he looked past Ianto to where Luke, Maria and Clyde were hovering in the hallway. "Assuming you and your new friends have left the SUV in one piece, we should be heading back to Cardiff - damn it, I need to call Gwen first, she'll be going insane! Ianto, could you fix me a coffee before we hit the road?"
There was something dryly amused in the quirk of Ianto's lips. "I think I can manage that." He glanced at Sarah Jane. "I'm guessing everyone else would prefer tea?"
"You have him well-trained," Sarah Jane said, not sure whether to be entertained or annoyed by Jack blithely standing in her house giving orders.
Jack laughed. "Don't be fooled. He's the one who has me whipped into shape. I was a happy slob before Ianto came to Torchwood. Now it's all clean shirts, clean sheets, regular mealtimes and all my case reports have to be written up and filed within 48 hours. You have no idea how cranky he gets over an untidy desk."
"So he's like, what, your butler?" Clyde asked.
Jack was dialling his mobile. "He's my everything," he said simply, and then he was booming into the phone. "Gwen! He's here, it's OK, I've found him, he's fine... Yeah, Ealing, would you believe? Yeah, she did. No, I wouldn't - listen, why don't you speak to him yourself?" He strode off towards the kitchen. "Well, one slight problem, he might not exactly know who you are - hey, it wasn't me! Look, just ask him yourself..."
The living room seemed both quieter and bigger without Jack Harkness in the middle of it, waving his arms about as he talked. Luke sat down next to Sarah Jane. "You OK?"
She sighed: it had been a busy Monday. "Yes, I'm fine. Jack is - well, he's not exactly a saint, but I don't think he's quite the demon I'd let my imagination conjure up. If I hadn't been so willing to believe all the bad things I'd heard about him..."
"You'd have called him yourself, and Ian would've gone home yesterday instead of today," Maria said. "So it all worked out fine in the end."
"I suppose." Though that didn't erase the image of Jack Harkness standing in her hallway, pointing a gun at her and the children, driven by anger born out of utter desperation, because she'd chosen to let her prejudices dictate her judgement... Would he have shot her, if Luke hadn't intervened? He's my everything. The answer was almost certainly yes: the thought made her shiver. In the end, even love didn't seem to make Torchwood any less of a liability.
What would Ian revert to, when he remembered who Ianto Jones was? Was he more like Jack Harkness, all surface charm over a coolly ruthless heart? That quirky sense of humour, his eagerness to please, his instinct to protect her and Luke from a possible danger - even if that danger was himself. Was that the 'real' Ianto?
Luke's gaze was fixed on his pile of scrapbooks, stacked neatly on the table. She wasn't sure if ruffling his hair would be uncool. "What do you think?" she asked him.
Luke looked thoughtful. "In the SUV, it was funny - he knew where everything was. Sat in the driver's seat straight away, adjusted the mirror, made all the systems light up -"
"Wait a minute - Jack said he'd deactivated it all!"
The three children shared a guilty look.
"Um, Ian must have - reactivated it?" Luke said vaguely.
"Mate, he hotwired it!" Clyde chipped in. "Actually, that was pretty cool."
"But Luke's right," Maria said. "He knew exactly what he was doing. He showed us the scanner, there was a computer... they've got a really good sound system!"
"He belonged," Luke said, quiet but firm. "Like with - with Jack: he doesn't remember, but he knows him. He was happy, in the car. He knows he's going home now." He sighed, then sat up straight. "I like him, I only ever wanted him to be happy."
"I know you did! And he will be, because of you." She gave in to the impulse then and hugged him quickly. Her brilliant, wonderful son, whose heart was even bigger than his amazing brain.
Luckily for his dignity, she'd managed to let go before Jack and Ianto came back, Ianto carrying a tray and serving tea and coffee with a quaintly formal air, in spite of the t-shirt and bare feet. Jack sat on the sofa next to her armchair and followed his every move as he handed round the china.
He leaned closer, conspiratorially. "God, you have no idea how much I've missed that!"
"I have a feeling you're not talking about a nice cup of tea, Captain."
He laughed, saluting her with his cup. "That too. Everything. Stupid conversations, the things he says, the clothes he wears, the way he wears them. Him and Gwen ganging up on me... It's funny how you have to lose some things, before you finally understand how much they matter to you."
Ianto was talking to Luke and Clyde - about the SUV, by the sound of it. Next to them, Maria looked like she was nodding off. Sarah Jane gestured at Ianto. "I'm sure your Doctor Jones is every bit as good as you say. But what will you do if she can't get his memories back?"
"Oh, if she's really at a loss, I guess I'll have to ask that other Doctor I know." He leaned back with a slow lazy grin, watching her.
Was he...? No, he couldn't, not Jack Harkness, of all people. Could he?
"You? You know - the Doctor?"
"Want to know about the first time I got caught out by Chula technology? It was... a lifetime ago, and I did something dumb and got myself in trouble - a lot of other people, too. I messed up, big time. And then this guy turned up, out of the blue, and he saved me. A guy who lived in a spaceship that looked like a blue police box, and a girl called Rose, and I got to travel with them, for a while. That was when I stopped being a waste of space and started to try to be what he thought I could be. Better, you know. A better man."
"Yes, he does that to you, doesn't he." She was smiling so hard it made her cheeks ache. "And you know Rose, too! I met her last year, when I met him again. Oh, he'd changed, of course - skinny suit, all teeth and hair, a bit mad. Was that your Doctor?"
"Yeah, but not the first time. My first time, he was leather jacket, big ears, cute accent. You?"
"I don't know that one! Well, the first time I met him, he was elegant, very distinguished, with white hair, maybe a little bit vain but so lovely! And the one after that was a complete contrast - mind you, he was all teeth and hair and a bit mad too, come to think of it. And Alistair says his first Doctor was nothing much like either of them!"
"Always the same guy really, though. We come and go, and he's always out there, dipping in and out of our lives..."
"He always changes us, though, doesn't he? For the better, I think." She glanced over to where Luke was propped up casually against Clyde, yawning, as Ianto quietly started to clear away the tea things. She knew how he felt: it really had been an exhausting day, one way or another. She shook her head at Jack. "Honestly, though - Jack Harkness, you read my files, so you knew I knew the Doctor - why on earth didn't you just tell me that you'd travelled with him too?"
Jack winked, putting a finger to his lips as he nodded across at Ianto. "I guess I got used to not mentioning the Doctor to other people. Especially around him! He gets kind of moody whenever I do, and knowing my luck that'd be the one thing he does remember from before! Crazy, though. If I hadn't met the Doctor, I'd never have met Ianto. And I certainly wouldn't have deserved - hey, hey, come here, you. Ears burning yet?"
Sarah Jane stretched. Really, the armchair was far too comfortable. Jack had pulled Ianto down onto the sofa next to him, and now they were talking, their voices soft, wrapped up in each other once again and oblivious to everything around them. She knew it was bad manners, but she couldn't help leaning her head to one side to eavesdrop.
"...why it activated in the first place?" Ianto was saying. "Even before you shot me, it was trying to reel me in. Or was that just the dream?"
"No, that happened. And I don't know why it stopped being dormant. Could have been one of those bits of Rift junk that got washed up in the Bay. Like a charger or a remote control. Maybe we just put something new in the Archive that tripped its wake-up button?"
"So we switched it on by accident, and it just grabbed the next person who walked past it?"
"Oh, I didn't say that." Jack had one of Ianto's hands in his own, tracing slow circles on the palm with his thumb. "No, it was you that it wanted."
"Why?"
"Because of Owen, and Toshiko, and how you aren't coping."
Ianto's face creased with an unhappy frown at the two names. "I don't - I know them... Something wrong. What happened?"
"We lost them. I'm sorry. A month ago. Nothing any of us could do, and it's been... Hard. Gwen cries all the time, and that's okay. We take care of her, and then she goes home to Rhys, and he helps her. And I cry too, mostly at night, and you hold onto me and that helps me.
"And you, Ianto. Want me to tell you what you don't remember yet? About how you look after both of us, keep the Hub running, deal with it all. You make sure we eat and drink, you've started to go through Tosh's notes, trying to do her job too. You're strong and you're stubborn and you absolutely will not crack, not in front of us. So when you think I'm not looking, you take things down to the Archive to file them away, and that's where you let go. Down there in the dark, so as not to let us see how badly it's hurting you too. That's why the Chula machine latched on to you."
"Ohh..." Sarah Jane hadn't meant to make a sound. Jack looked up from Ianto's stricken face, smiling sadly at her and nodding.
"Chula tech. It's what it's programmed to seek out. A living creature in pain. It doesn't care if that's a laser burn or a bomb blast, or - grief. It just wanted to take him away and get him healed."
It made her heart ache to look at Ianto now. She closed her eyes. "So young, Jack, he's too young..."
Jack's voice was a warm whisper. "I know. But I promise you, Sarah Jane Smith, I'll take care of him. I will heal him, and I will keep him safe, trust me."
"See that you do, Captain," Sarah Jane mumbled. "Or I'll be...
And then she was asleep.
***
Ianto blinks, stares at Sarah Jane dozing serenely in her armchair, then across to where the three kids are sleeping in a comfortable heap on the other sofa.
"So, that would be Retcon?" he says politely.
Jack studies him. He doesn't look worried or concerned, just thoughtful.
"Yes, I Retconned them all, in the tea."
"And we both had coffee." Ianto frowns. "Will it harm them?"
"No, absolutely not. I give you my word. They'll all wake up in a couple of hours, and the last few days will be a blur, and they won't remember you or me. That's all."
"Not if Sarah Jane notices your unloaded pistol in her bread-bin. Or my shoes, wherever they hid them."
"Which is why you and I need to go room by room and clear up anything that shows we were ever here. You okay with that?" Ianto considers, nods. "Then let's get started."
Ianto may not remember who he is but he's good at this, of course: it's the kind of thing Jack had him doing from the first week he joined Torchwood Three. Clean-up, cover-up, his own near-eidetic brand of meticulous attention to detail that has him stripping the spare bed, tearing pages out of notebooks, bundling his old clothes into a carrier bag to take away, and fitting a bell back onto the bicycle in the side alley.
The shoes prove elusive, until Jack scans for more residual baryon and they track the last fuzzy blip to the bottom of Luke's wardrobe.
Back in the living room, he watches Ianto thinking and processing, carefully retracing every move over the last few days. The urge to stop him right there - to walk up and touch him, kiss him, feel him up, even - is intense, but Jack hangs back so as not to distract him. To be fair, all that should probably wait until he can remember who he is, anyway. It's kind of unscrupulous to take advantage of a dream-memory.
"Phones," Ianto says suddenly, pointing. "Luke, Maria, Clyde - they took photos of me, when they thought I was asleep."
"Cute," Jack smirks. "Did they mess your hair up too?" Ianto stares at him, bemused.
The phones turn out to be password-locked. Jack shrugs, fiddles with his wrist-strap, and swipes each phone past it. "Memory wipe," he explains. "But not very selective, unfortunately. Let's hope they're all as diligent about backing up their sim cards as you are with mine!"
"Isn't that going to be a bit of a giveaway?" Ianto asks. "Everyone wakes up, the weekend's a blank and so are all the phones?"
Jack waves at the ceiling.
"Did you get a look in the attic while you were here? Guess what the amazing Sarah Jane Smith has up there - a great big computer that didn't come from PC World. Or anywhere else on this world, for that matter. Or this timezone. Trust me, these kids are already used to a generous dose of wacky in their lives. One blurry-edged weekend is going to be nothing to them!"
"I do - trust you, that is. Just making sure everything ties up."
Jack has to kiss him then. It's probably wrong and bad, but it's been a terrible ten days and Ianto's yielding mouth is every bit as sweet and hot as he remembers.
"I shouldn't do that to you - not while you can't really remember me. Sorry."
"And yet," - Ianto runs the tip of his tongue over shiny lips, eyebrow quirked - "putting up remarkably little resistance here. You do smell nice."
"Nice? Is that the best thing you can say about my alluring pheromones?"
"Sorry. Thought it was a new fabric conditioner."
He's eyeing Jack up with that sly, sly poker-face. "I'd spank you if we didn't have an unconscious audience of minors. Are you going to ask me why?"
"Why the Retcon?" Ianto shrugs. "You'll tell me if you want me to know."
"Now that is exactly why I have to kiss you again." God, Jack loves Gwen to bits but she is utterly, completely incapable of sitting in silence and letting him unwind his thoughts at his own pace. She questions everything, and it's one of her great strengths, of course, but it also drives him mad at times: this last week more than ever before.
Ianto is a quiet presence, a safe haven, thoughtful and un-shockable. He breaks slowly away from the kiss and moves around the room, straightening a last few things, checking each of the oblivious children, shifting the cushion behind Clyde to support his head better, pushing a lick of hair out of Luke's eye and resting Maria's dangling hand gently in her lap.
He stops in front of Sarah Jane, a sleeping queen in a stripy jumper, curled up catlike in her armchair. Ianto leans in, takes her hand and kisses her cheek, slowly, then glances back at Jack. "Do you think she'd mind?"
"A kiss from you? I think she'd be fine. Now see, if I tried that I'd probably have gotten a slap, Retcon or not. D'you think I'm losing my touch?"
"She protected me," Ianto says softly. "They all did. They didn't know anything about me, or what I might be, but they all wanted to help. I don't know what would have happened if Luke hadn't found me. I was -" He looks down, fidgeting. "- I was too scared. Just couldn't think..."
"It's okay." Jack puts his arm around Ianto's shoulders, draws him close. "Shock. And they did find you. They took care of you, until I could come and get you. And what did I do when I did get here? Lied to her, mocked her, forced my way into her house and pulled a gun on her in front of her son and their friends."
"It isn't exactly how you'd want to be remembered," Ianto says wryly.
"You're damned right. This way, they don't remember anything bad, about either of us. Then give it a month or two, and you and I'll find an excuse and come calling - only this time, Torchwood won't be the scary bad guys with the guns. We'll be there to offer them our help, for the next time they have a problem with the Bane or the Slitheen, whatever it is. I want her to trust me, to like me. And I want her to think that you have the best boyfriend in the galaxy!"
"Do I? I mean, is that what - you, me...?"
"Yep."
"We're..."
"Yes we are. What, you think I just roam around randomly kissing anyone if they're hot enough?"
"Strangely enough..." Ianto says equably. "Let's hope I turn out to be the tolerant sort, when I can actually remember who I am."
"And the sooner we get back to Torchwood, the sooner you'll know. Ready to go?"
Ianto nods. In the doorway, Jack takes a last look. There's afternoon sun spilling across the sleeping figures in the living-room. It's a perfect family tableau, supremely peaceful, impeccably domestic. Safe. All the things Jack's enjoyed in the past, other lives he's lived in and passed through and out-lived.
All the things Ianto doesn't get to have: being in Torchwood, being with him. Maybe the unselfish thing would be to Retcon him too and leave him tucked away here in this safe nest.
When he turns, Ianto is right behind him, waiting. Gorgeous as ever, even in the atypical jeans and t-shirt, and smiling at Jack with a slightly puzzled look as Jack walks over and envelops him in a fierce hug. He's Ianto, warm and solid and alive, arms tight around Jack's back, wriggling closer, his lips brushing Jack's neck with a contented little sigh.
And selfishness wins, as it always does.
"Come on, "Jack says, "Time to take you home."
Part 5
"Chula technology," Jack Harkness said with a sigh, leaning back on the sofa. "It's my Achilles heel. Should've had that section of the archive walled up years ago. Still, I guess this is the second time it's had me meet people worth meeting. Maybe it's not all bad."
"Your friend thinks the amnesia can be reversed?" Sarah Jane asked. They were sitting in her living room, Jack in his shirtsleeves after half an hour on the phone, relaxed and charmingly talkative now, as if the coldly brutal antagonist of a few hours ago had been a mirage. Outside, Luke, Clyde, Maria and Ianto were probably getting up to even more trouble in the ridiculous Torchwood SUV that Jack had happily unlocked for them to investigate. ("Systems are all deadlocked," he'd assured her, "and Ianto will make sure they don't press anything they shouldn't."
"Ian - Ianto - doesn't even remember what any of the buttons do!"
"Yeah, but his love for that car borders on the adulterous. You know, I ripped off the aerial once - total emergency - and he blanked me for a fortnight. I didn't even get coffee, let alone - well, you get the picture!")
The phone call had been to a Doctor Jones - in the derided UNIT, of all places. In spite of his earlier contempt, whatever he'd heard from her seemed to have put the Captain's mind at rest.
"Yeah, Martha wants to see him herself, of course, but she's pretty sure it's another Chula evac protocol, she's dealt with their hardware before. Probably something designed for search and rescue in battle - finds the wounded, teleports them out of danger and back to the triage ship to be treated."
"Except there is no Chula spaceship here on Earth."
"You got it! Whatever we had in the archive, according to the records it's been sitting there dormant for sixty years or more. A whole lot of Chula equipment found its way to Earth during both World Wars - trying to do what it was designed for, I guess. Pity most people here don't know how to use any of it."
"So," Sarah Jane said thoughtfully, "this Chula medical thing in your archives woke up, found a 'casualty' to rescue, beamed Ianto away, and then didn't have any evacuation point to send him to."
"It makes sense. The moment my bullet caught him, he was a medical priority for it - get the injured soldier out of immediate danger first and worry about what to do with him later."
"So it looked around for something that might be a Chula base - "
" - noticed a great big cloud of baryon radiation stuck to some buildings miles away but on the same landmass -"
"And rematerialised him in the Bubble Shock factory!"
"And I went looking for an object, something that might have acted as a homing beacon." Jack shook his head. "But all it did was home in something that looked like home. Like when you're lost at night and you go looking for a light, because anything light means civilisation."
"Well, a homing beacon was a logical guess." She paused. "But the amnesia, what's that - some sort of post-traumatic shock?"
"Martha doesn't think so. More likely to be the Chula equivalent of Retcon, or a medical coma, even. Put a temporary block on the patient's memories while their body recovers - it keeps them from getting stressed or agitated from their injuries, or the shock of the teleport. Don't worry, she'll figure out how to get him back."
"And if she doesn't?"
Ianto had materialised silently in the doorway. Sarah Jane jumped, but Jack didn't blink, uncoiling himself from the sofa and rising to clasp him by the shoulders.
"Don't worry! Martha's always come through for us before, right? You're going to be fine! Now -" he looked past Ianto to where Luke, Maria and Clyde were hovering in the hallway. "Assuming you and your new friends have left the SUV in one piece, we should be heading back to Cardiff - damn it, I need to call Gwen first, she'll be going insane! Ianto, could you fix me a coffee before we hit the road?"
There was something dryly amused in the quirk of Ianto's lips. "I think I can manage that." He glanced at Sarah Jane. "I'm guessing everyone else would prefer tea?"
"You have him well-trained," Sarah Jane said, not sure whether to be entertained or annoyed by Jack blithely standing in her house giving orders.
Jack laughed. "Don't be fooled. He's the one who has me whipped into shape. I was a happy slob before Ianto came to Torchwood. Now it's all clean shirts, clean sheets, regular mealtimes and all my case reports have to be written up and filed within 48 hours. You have no idea how cranky he gets over an untidy desk."
"So he's like, what, your butler?" Clyde asked.
Jack was dialling his mobile. "He's my everything," he said simply, and then he was booming into the phone. "Gwen! He's here, it's OK, I've found him, he's fine... Yeah, Ealing, would you believe? Yeah, she did. No, I wouldn't - listen, why don't you speak to him yourself?" He strode off towards the kitchen. "Well, one slight problem, he might not exactly know who you are - hey, it wasn't me! Look, just ask him yourself..."
The living room seemed both quieter and bigger without Jack Harkness in the middle of it, waving his arms about as he talked. Luke sat down next to Sarah Jane. "You OK?"
She sighed: it had been a busy Monday. "Yes, I'm fine. Jack is - well, he's not exactly a saint, but I don't think he's quite the demon I'd let my imagination conjure up. If I hadn't been so willing to believe all the bad things I'd heard about him..."
"You'd have called him yourself, and Ian would've gone home yesterday instead of today," Maria said. "So it all worked out fine in the end."
"I suppose." Though that didn't erase the image of Jack Harkness standing in her hallway, pointing a gun at her and the children, driven by anger born out of utter desperation, because she'd chosen to let her prejudices dictate her judgement... Would he have shot her, if Luke hadn't intervened? He's my everything. The answer was almost certainly yes: the thought made her shiver. In the end, even love didn't seem to make Torchwood any less of a liability.
What would Ian revert to, when he remembered who Ianto Jones was? Was he more like Jack Harkness, all surface charm over a coolly ruthless heart? That quirky sense of humour, his eagerness to please, his instinct to protect her and Luke from a possible danger - even if that danger was himself. Was that the 'real' Ianto?
Luke's gaze was fixed on his pile of scrapbooks, stacked neatly on the table. She wasn't sure if ruffling his hair would be uncool. "What do you think?" she asked him.
Luke looked thoughtful. "In the SUV, it was funny - he knew where everything was. Sat in the driver's seat straight away, adjusted the mirror, made all the systems light up -"
"Wait a minute - Jack said he'd deactivated it all!"
The three children shared a guilty look.
"Um, Ian must have - reactivated it?" Luke said vaguely.
"Mate, he hotwired it!" Clyde chipped in. "Actually, that was pretty cool."
"But Luke's right," Maria said. "He knew exactly what he was doing. He showed us the scanner, there was a computer... they've got a really good sound system!"
"He belonged," Luke said, quiet but firm. "Like with - with Jack: he doesn't remember, but he knows him. He was happy, in the car. He knows he's going home now." He sighed, then sat up straight. "I like him, I only ever wanted him to be happy."
"I know you did! And he will be, because of you." She gave in to the impulse then and hugged him quickly. Her brilliant, wonderful son, whose heart was even bigger than his amazing brain.
Luckily for his dignity, she'd managed to let go before Jack and Ianto came back, Ianto carrying a tray and serving tea and coffee with a quaintly formal air, in spite of the t-shirt and bare feet. Jack sat on the sofa next to her armchair and followed his every move as he handed round the china.
He leaned closer, conspiratorially. "God, you have no idea how much I've missed that!"
"I have a feeling you're not talking about a nice cup of tea, Captain."
He laughed, saluting her with his cup. "That too. Everything. Stupid conversations, the things he says, the clothes he wears, the way he wears them. Him and Gwen ganging up on me... It's funny how you have to lose some things, before you finally understand how much they matter to you."
Ianto was talking to Luke and Clyde - about the SUV, by the sound of it. Next to them, Maria looked like she was nodding off. Sarah Jane gestured at Ianto. "I'm sure your Doctor Jones is every bit as good as you say. But what will you do if she can't get his memories back?"
"Oh, if she's really at a loss, I guess I'll have to ask that other Doctor I know." He leaned back with a slow lazy grin, watching her.
Was he...? No, he couldn't, not Jack Harkness, of all people. Could he?
"You? You know - the Doctor?"
"Want to know about the first time I got caught out by Chula technology? It was... a lifetime ago, and I did something dumb and got myself in trouble - a lot of other people, too. I messed up, big time. And then this guy turned up, out of the blue, and he saved me. A guy who lived in a spaceship that looked like a blue police box, and a girl called Rose, and I got to travel with them, for a while. That was when I stopped being a waste of space and started to try to be what he thought I could be. Better, you know. A better man."
"Yes, he does that to you, doesn't he." She was smiling so hard it made her cheeks ache. "And you know Rose, too! I met her last year, when I met him again. Oh, he'd changed, of course - skinny suit, all teeth and hair, a bit mad. Was that your Doctor?"
"Yeah, but not the first time. My first time, he was leather jacket, big ears, cute accent. You?"
"I don't know that one! Well, the first time I met him, he was elegant, very distinguished, with white hair, maybe a little bit vain but so lovely! And the one after that was a complete contrast - mind you, he was all teeth and hair and a bit mad too, come to think of it. And Alistair says his first Doctor was nothing much like either of them!"
"Always the same guy really, though. We come and go, and he's always out there, dipping in and out of our lives..."
"He always changes us, though, doesn't he? For the better, I think." She glanced over to where Luke was propped up casually against Clyde, yawning, as Ianto quietly started to clear away the tea things. She knew how he felt: it really had been an exhausting day, one way or another. She shook her head at Jack. "Honestly, though - Jack Harkness, you read my files, so you knew I knew the Doctor - why on earth didn't you just tell me that you'd travelled with him too?"
Jack winked, putting a finger to his lips as he nodded across at Ianto. "I guess I got used to not mentioning the Doctor to other people. Especially around him! He gets kind of moody whenever I do, and knowing my luck that'd be the one thing he does remember from before! Crazy, though. If I hadn't met the Doctor, I'd never have met Ianto. And I certainly wouldn't have deserved - hey, hey, come here, you. Ears burning yet?"
Sarah Jane stretched. Really, the armchair was far too comfortable. Jack had pulled Ianto down onto the sofa next to him, and now they were talking, their voices soft, wrapped up in each other once again and oblivious to everything around them. She knew it was bad manners, but she couldn't help leaning her head to one side to eavesdrop.
"...why it activated in the first place?" Ianto was saying. "Even before you shot me, it was trying to reel me in. Or was that just the dream?"
"No, that happened. And I don't know why it stopped being dormant. Could have been one of those bits of Rift junk that got washed up in the Bay. Like a charger or a remote control. Maybe we just put something new in the Archive that tripped its wake-up button?"
"So we switched it on by accident, and it just grabbed the next person who walked past it?"
"Oh, I didn't say that." Jack had one of Ianto's hands in his own, tracing slow circles on the palm with his thumb. "No, it was you that it wanted."
"Why?"
"Because of Owen, and Toshiko, and how you aren't coping."
Ianto's face creased with an unhappy frown at the two names. "I don't - I know them... Something wrong. What happened?"
"We lost them. I'm sorry. A month ago. Nothing any of us could do, and it's been... Hard. Gwen cries all the time, and that's okay. We take care of her, and then she goes home to Rhys, and he helps her. And I cry too, mostly at night, and you hold onto me and that helps me.
"And you, Ianto. Want me to tell you what you don't remember yet? About how you look after both of us, keep the Hub running, deal with it all. You make sure we eat and drink, you've started to go through Tosh's notes, trying to do her job too. You're strong and you're stubborn and you absolutely will not crack, not in front of us. So when you think I'm not looking, you take things down to the Archive to file them away, and that's where you let go. Down there in the dark, so as not to let us see how badly it's hurting you too. That's why the Chula machine latched on to you."
"Ohh..." Sarah Jane hadn't meant to make a sound. Jack looked up from Ianto's stricken face, smiling sadly at her and nodding.
"Chula tech. It's what it's programmed to seek out. A living creature in pain. It doesn't care if that's a laser burn or a bomb blast, or - grief. It just wanted to take him away and get him healed."
It made her heart ache to look at Ianto now. She closed her eyes. "So young, Jack, he's too young..."
Jack's voice was a warm whisper. "I know. But I promise you, Sarah Jane Smith, I'll take care of him. I will heal him, and I will keep him safe, trust me."
"See that you do, Captain," Sarah Jane mumbled. "Or I'll be...
And then she was asleep.
***
Ianto blinks, stares at Sarah Jane dozing serenely in her armchair, then across to where the three kids are sleeping in a comfortable heap on the other sofa.
"So, that would be Retcon?" he says politely.
Jack studies him. He doesn't look worried or concerned, just thoughtful.
"Yes, I Retconned them all, in the tea."
"And we both had coffee." Ianto frowns. "Will it harm them?"
"No, absolutely not. I give you my word. They'll all wake up in a couple of hours, and the last few days will be a blur, and they won't remember you or me. That's all."
"Not if Sarah Jane notices your unloaded pistol in her bread-bin. Or my shoes, wherever they hid them."
"Which is why you and I need to go room by room and clear up anything that shows we were ever here. You okay with that?" Ianto considers, nods. "Then let's get started."
Ianto may not remember who he is but he's good at this, of course: it's the kind of thing Jack had him doing from the first week he joined Torchwood Three. Clean-up, cover-up, his own near-eidetic brand of meticulous attention to detail that has him stripping the spare bed, tearing pages out of notebooks, bundling his old clothes into a carrier bag to take away, and fitting a bell back onto the bicycle in the side alley.
The shoes prove elusive, until Jack scans for more residual baryon and they track the last fuzzy blip to the bottom of Luke's wardrobe.
Back in the living room, he watches Ianto thinking and processing, carefully retracing every move over the last few days. The urge to stop him right there - to walk up and touch him, kiss him, feel him up, even - is intense, but Jack hangs back so as not to distract him. To be fair, all that should probably wait until he can remember who he is, anyway. It's kind of unscrupulous to take advantage of a dream-memory.
"Phones," Ianto says suddenly, pointing. "Luke, Maria, Clyde - they took photos of me, when they thought I was asleep."
"Cute," Jack smirks. "Did they mess your hair up too?" Ianto stares at him, bemused.
The phones turn out to be password-locked. Jack shrugs, fiddles with his wrist-strap, and swipes each phone past it. "Memory wipe," he explains. "But not very selective, unfortunately. Let's hope they're all as diligent about backing up their sim cards as you are with mine!"
"Isn't that going to be a bit of a giveaway?" Ianto asks. "Everyone wakes up, the weekend's a blank and so are all the phones?"
Jack waves at the ceiling.
"Did you get a look in the attic while you were here? Guess what the amazing Sarah Jane Smith has up there - a great big computer that didn't come from PC World. Or anywhere else on this world, for that matter. Or this timezone. Trust me, these kids are already used to a generous dose of wacky in their lives. One blurry-edged weekend is going to be nothing to them!"
"I do - trust you, that is. Just making sure everything ties up."
Jack has to kiss him then. It's probably wrong and bad, but it's been a terrible ten days and Ianto's yielding mouth is every bit as sweet and hot as he remembers.
"I shouldn't do that to you - not while you can't really remember me. Sorry."
"And yet," - Ianto runs the tip of his tongue over shiny lips, eyebrow quirked - "putting up remarkably little resistance here. You do smell nice."
"Nice? Is that the best thing you can say about my alluring pheromones?"
"Sorry. Thought it was a new fabric conditioner."
He's eyeing Jack up with that sly, sly poker-face. "I'd spank you if we didn't have an unconscious audience of minors. Are you going to ask me why?"
"Why the Retcon?" Ianto shrugs. "You'll tell me if you want me to know."
"Now that is exactly why I have to kiss you again." God, Jack loves Gwen to bits but she is utterly, completely incapable of sitting in silence and letting him unwind his thoughts at his own pace. She questions everything, and it's one of her great strengths, of course, but it also drives him mad at times: this last week more than ever before.
Ianto is a quiet presence, a safe haven, thoughtful and un-shockable. He breaks slowly away from the kiss and moves around the room, straightening a last few things, checking each of the oblivious children, shifting the cushion behind Clyde to support his head better, pushing a lick of hair out of Luke's eye and resting Maria's dangling hand gently in her lap.
He stops in front of Sarah Jane, a sleeping queen in a stripy jumper, curled up catlike in her armchair. Ianto leans in, takes her hand and kisses her cheek, slowly, then glances back at Jack. "Do you think she'd mind?"
"A kiss from you? I think she'd be fine. Now see, if I tried that I'd probably have gotten a slap, Retcon or not. D'you think I'm losing my touch?"
"She protected me," Ianto says softly. "They all did. They didn't know anything about me, or what I might be, but they all wanted to help. I don't know what would have happened if Luke hadn't found me. I was -" He looks down, fidgeting. "- I was too scared. Just couldn't think..."
"It's okay." Jack puts his arm around Ianto's shoulders, draws him close. "Shock. And they did find you. They took care of you, until I could come and get you. And what did I do when I did get here? Lied to her, mocked her, forced my way into her house and pulled a gun on her in front of her son and their friends."
"It isn't exactly how you'd want to be remembered," Ianto says wryly.
"You're damned right. This way, they don't remember anything bad, about either of us. Then give it a month or two, and you and I'll find an excuse and come calling - only this time, Torchwood won't be the scary bad guys with the guns. We'll be there to offer them our help, for the next time they have a problem with the Bane or the Slitheen, whatever it is. I want her to trust me, to like me. And I want her to think that you have the best boyfriend in the galaxy!"
"Do I? I mean, is that what - you, me...?"
"Yep."
"We're..."
"Yes we are. What, you think I just roam around randomly kissing anyone if they're hot enough?"
"Strangely enough..." Ianto says equably. "Let's hope I turn out to be the tolerant sort, when I can actually remember who I am."
"And the sooner we get back to Torchwood, the sooner you'll know. Ready to go?"
Ianto nods. In the doorway, Jack takes a last look. There's afternoon sun spilling across the sleeping figures in the living-room. It's a perfect family tableau, supremely peaceful, impeccably domestic. Safe. All the things Jack's enjoyed in the past, other lives he's lived in and passed through and out-lived.
All the things Ianto doesn't get to have: being in Torchwood, being with him. Maybe the unselfish thing would be to Retcon him too and leave him tucked away here in this safe nest.
When he turns, Ianto is right behind him, waiting. Gorgeous as ever, even in the atypical jeans and t-shirt, and smiling at Jack with a slightly puzzled look as Jack walks over and envelops him in a fierce hug. He's Ianto, warm and solid and alive, arms tight around Jack's back, wriggling closer, his lips brushing Jack's neck with a contented little sigh.
And selfishness wins, as it always does.
"Come on, "Jack says, "Time to take you home."