The Darkest Night Chapter 3
Dec. 7th, 2010 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Title: The Darkest Night
Chapter Title: Chapter 3
Challenge/Fest: Ianto Big Bang
Rating: M
Dedication: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mcparrot for the awesome beta work, and to xxxholiclover and a_silver_story for the artses
Summary: Although the crisis with the 456 is over, Torchwood’s problems definitely aren’t. The government is meddling, Jack is pregnant and they don’t trust the team they’ve been assigned. When they cut loose from Torchwood, things get worse rather than better, and Ianto soon finds himself adrift from his loved ones and on the run, chasing down the chance that Steven’s death might not have been what it seemed.
Characters: Ianto, Jack and Alice, Steven, Agent Johnson
Contains: Pregnancy, violence, death, drug use, child in harm’s way, Ianto/OFC. COE compliant
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
Ianto knocked on the door of a boarded-up warehouse just outside the regenerated docklands area and stuffed his hands back into his pockets to keep them warm. It had taken him a couple of days to find his way into the squatting network, and they’d eventually pointed him to a newly-squatted space that would welcome anyone who could use a screwdriver. Slush from the street clung to his boots and soaked into the legs of his jeans, whilst tiny flakes of fresh snow settled in his hair. When the door finally opened he was studied by a young person, possibly a man, possibly not human at all, with blown pupils and greasy hair that hung over his shoulders. Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. “Is this The Cake Factory?”
The person blinked at him and scowled. “Are y’a pig?” they asked, in a slurred voice that Ianto was almost certain was that of a human male.
He raised his eyebrow even further and looked over his own shoulder at his backpack, then back at the person. “Do I look like a pig?”
“I dunno. It takes all sorts. Come in pig.” He opened the door wider and let him into the cavernous warehouse space, calling out, “Piggy come to call.”
Heads snapped up, all of them human and in varying stages of cleanliness and awareness, and Ianto shrugged at them helplessly . “Don’t ask me,” he told them. “Angie sent me over here, said you had space and a use for a screwdriver.”
The crowd relaxed at that, and several of them for to their feet to welcome him. “Ignore Tosser,” a gangly young man told him. He extended a hand that was as long and thin as the rest of him to Ianto. “I’m Scully; nice to meet you.”
“No, really?” He shook Scully’s hand and grinned. “My boyfriend used to be Mulder .”
“Yeah? Well I guess you’re Mulder this time.” He clapped him on the shoulder and tugged him over to the circle. “Guys, this is Mulder. Chef’ll be back in a bit, he says,” he added to Ianto. They sat on the floor and Ianto declined the bong he was offered. “So what brings you to us, apart from your screwdriver?”
“Nowhere better than London, is there?” He looked around and they nodded. “Shit goes down here.”
“Shit’s going down everywhere, my friend,” a girl across from him told him. She gestured expansively with the bong and leaned back on one hand. “One day, the downtrodden of this country are going to rise up and crush the corporate scum. And we’ll be there. Wherever it is, we’ll be there.”
“Torchwood are the worst,” another girl opined. “Tramping over us and denying they exist for years. What are they for?”
There was a general mutter of agreement, and Ianto shifted uncomfortably. He declined the bong yet again and looked up at the ceiling. “This is a Torchwood place, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and they’re not shifting us,” the same girl muttered, without conviction. “We’re taking it back for the masses who’ve put up with their shit for too long. We’re gonna expose them… once we get the information off the computer, that is.”
“They left a computer here?”
“Sure.” She gestured with the bong to an office off the main hall. “We use the guest account to update the Facebook group. Taking it back.”
He nodded. “I’ll see if I can do anything with it, but first… do you have a toilet here, or do we use the pub?”
X~X~X~X
The Cake Factory, named for reasons long forgotten, was home to a chaotic mix of university drop-outs, drug addicts and anarcho-communists. It didn’t have a hierarchy or a leader, but it did have someone who knew what was going on at least some of the time, and that was Chef. He claimed that he’d been conceived the night before 144 Piccadilly fell and raised in Frestonia, that he’d danced at Live Aid and spent the years before it going from picket line to picket line to join the battles. Ianto wasn’t sure that the figures quite added up, but Chef told a good story and he was able to keep track of what day of the week it was so that they went scavenging in the right places. The Cake lived on what was thrown away by shops and ‘liberated’ on late night journeys in the dark, and Ianto quickly became an essential tool for their trips, for his talent with a lock pick and his complete lack of restraint when it came to breaking the law and getting his hands dirty.
He walked alongside Chef one night when they were returning to the factory, laden down with a depressing amount of perfectly good food that the supermarkets couldn’t sell. Despite his contentment with the life, he’d so far found nothing to point him towards Steven, and he was running out of time before he was found again. The handles of the bags he carried cut into his fingers, and he shifted them into one hand so he could flex the other. “How much further is it?” he asked Chef. “I can’t even work out where we are.”
“Just leaving Rotherhythe. Ten minutes off.”
“My fingers are going to hate me,” he chuckled. “They’re not used to carrier bags.”
“Hands that hold guns aren’t often good at the day-to-day,” Chef commented.
Ianto shot him a look as they passed under a streetlight. “What makes you think I hold a gun?”
“The way you react when Bottle mentions Torchwood. You don’t agree with her.” Ianto heard the bags shift as if he were shrugging. “It wasn’t hard. You’re not here to squat – you’re here to hide.”
“Yep.” He put his bags down against a fence and Chef stopped with him. “Does anyone else know?”
“I haven’t mentioned it to them.” There was the click of a lighter and then Ianto was left blinking away the after-images of the flame whilst the tip of Chef’s cigarette glowed in the darkness. “What are you looking for?”
He closed his eyes and leaned against the fence. “A child. My nephew, of sorts. I’m not married to his uncle, and he’s not his uncle, but he’s nearly my nephew.” The cigarette glowed brighter for a moment and bobbed. Ianto found himself wishing that a car would go past or that someone would turn a light on across the street, just to give him a bit of light. “Do you know what they did to defeat the aliens that came in July?”
“No, I don’t.” Chef offered him the cigarette, and their hands brushed together when he took it. “What did they do?”
“They took a child from his mother, ran a signal through his brain and broadcast it to them.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and passed it back. “Or so they told his grieving family.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
“I’ve heard rumours.” He looked at the patch of darker night and the bobbing glow. “And now I need to know the truth.”
The air filled with another cloud of pungent smoke, and then there was a rustle of bags. Ianto looked down to the white bags at his own feet and crouched cautiously to pick them up. When he wasn’t captured or murdered for letting his guard down and Chef set off in the direction of The Cake, he followed behind with heavy steps. The next street was lit, and the group were huddled at the edge of the shadows, waiting for them. Chef nodded a greeting and glanced at Ianto. “We just had to shift some stuff around. Bag splittage was occurring.”
“Fucking capitalism,” Bottle muttered. There was a rumble of agreement and then they trudged on towards home.
X~X~X~X
“You’re leaving.” Chef dropped onto the chair that Ianto’s socks had just vacated and watched him tightening the straps on his rucksack. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes I do.” He buckled the top flap down and tightened that as well, then sat on the floor next to it. “I can’t trust you.” Chef looked about to protest, but Ianto cut him off, “No, I can’t. Would you, in my position?”
Chef gave him a wry smile. “Where will you go?”
“Not decided yet. Somewhere…” He sighed and lifted the bag. “God, that’s heavy. Anyway.”
“Mulder.” Chef held out his hand. “It was good having you, whatever your reasons.”
“It was good being here.” They walked to the door and Chef let him out. He hovered on the doorstep, facing the rain, and turned back with a smile. “And now, if anyone asks, you can say that Ianto Jones was here, and he went, and you don’t know where he’s gone. You can tell them what I want, and that I’m looking for my answers. And if the person asking after me is calling himself Captain Jack Harkness… tell him I love him.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with passing that sort of message on; it’s a bit personal and morbid.” Chef pulled a face. “I’ll do my best, though. Was it Birmingham you said you were heading for?”
“It might have been.” He saluted and turned away again. “Look after them, Chef. Let them eat cake.”
He walked through the night and into the morning, eventually stopping at a train station to read the Metro. It was the usual drivel, but it gave him an excuse to keep his head down whilst he ate a bag of fresh doughnuts. The station filled and emptied around him repeatedly, and he ignored all of them. An article on the fifth page caught his eye, and he lifted it to read it more carefully.
”Former Prime Minister Brian Green lost yesterday’s by-election for the seat of Henley. The disgraced former politician didn’t even win over enough voters to get back his deposit, getting only 91 votes - 0.3% of votes cast. Neighbours in the rural village of Towersey say that he won’t have any support in the village…”
“Towersey…” he muttered. “Why is it always places I’ve never heard of?” He shoved the last doughnut in his mouth and tucked his paper under his arm, swinging onto the train a moment before the doors closed.
X~X~X~X
Ianto was good at waiting. Torchwood had always involved long hours of waiting for the next sighting or the next victim, days of poring over reports and files for clues, weeks of waiting for the shoe to drop; and Jack wasn’t always available to keep him distracted. He’d perfected a state of zen in which he could process and respond to all information he was provided with whilst not thinking of anything much.
Brian Green, on the other hand, was oblivious to everything around him as he stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. He dropped it, spilling the water across the floor and his feet, when Ianto spoke behind him, “Terrible for the environment, that. I’m told that the tap water is safe.”
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my kitchen?” He sounded unsure of himself, and squinted at Ianto. “Are you with the press?”
“Nope.” He tossed an apple from hand to hand and watched Green’s eyes track it. “I’m with Torchwood.” He caught and held the apple and Green’s face paled. “The phones are cut off, the door is locked and I’ve stolen your keys… and your children won’t be home from school for hours, will they?”
The other man sank to the floor and sat in the puddle of spilled water. His eyes were red-rimmed and heavily shadowed, his hair was matted and stuck to his scalp, and the weight he’d lost showed in the sag and pallor of his skin. “What do you want?” he asked again. “I don’t know anything, I never knew anything! I just did what I was told. And… and then they threw me away like so much garbage, just like you.”
Ianto seethed, but he was careful to give Green his most reassuring smile as he came towards him. “There, this is what I want to know.” He pulled a chair over and sat on it, which still left him towering over Green, but much closer. “It’s all we can do, isn’t it? Following orders from higher up, however high those orders go. It’s not up to us to question them.”
He nodded, gaze fixed on Ianto. “They’re so powerful. So powerful, you can’t imagine.”
“Oh, I think I can, Brian.” He leaned forwards and rested one hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Who was it, Brian? Who told you what they’d done to save the world?”
“I…” He looked around. “I can’t, they’ll… my children.”
“And what about Alice Carter, Brian? Didn’t her son deserve protecting?” He squeezed again and his thumb dug into Green’s shoulder. “Let me protect her for you.”
He cried out and nodded, and rubbed at his shoulder when Ianto released him. “There’s a department, off the records, tasked with protecting… things. Secrets.”
“Government assassins?”
“No!” He grimaced, dropping his head back against the counter. “Not usually. They just… extradition and torture,” he rushed out when Ianto leant forwards again. “We weren’t supposed to know they even existed.”
Ianto sucked in a deep breath and sat back in his seat. Green still cowered away from him, and whimpered when he stood up. “Do you know where they are?” he asked. “Brian!”
“I don’t know!” he sobbed, and Ianto believed him. “They’re near Cambridge, somewhere… or Oxford. I don’t know which. I don’t know any more!”
“You’re pathetic and you make my skin crawl,” Ianto told him. He collected his rucksack from next to the sofa and unlocked the door, throwing the keys at Green to make him jump. “And I didn’t vote for you.”
He strode from the house, swinging the keys of a stolen motorbike on one finger. In full view of the kitchen, he pulled on the helmet and revved the engine before roaring off down the road. He enjoyed the feel of speed down to the crossroads, all the way to the pub car park just beyond it. There were a few cars already there, so he tucked the bike in behind one of them, in the shade of a bare tree, and shed the jacket and helmet again. These he stashed in the hedge, and then he left them all behind and went to sit in the pub with a cheese burger and a pint, and the surveillance kit out on the table in front of him pretending to be a laptop.
The bug on the phone line sent him an alert that it was connected, and he picked up the headphones to listen to the conversation. Green was telling an unnamed operative, a man, that Ianto had been and threatened him, but he hadn’t told him anything, and then Ianto had left on a motorbike in full leathers, heading for Cambridge. The operative promised that someone would be there soon and hung up, leaving Green talking to an empty line.
Ianto snorted and flipped the lid closed, pushing the burger away so that he could pack his bag again. He drained the glass and took it back to the bar to ask about the buses. There was one due from outside the pub in ten minutes, so he killed time in the toilets, mostly trying to navigate the cramped space with his backpack, and went out to catch it.
The bus was going to Thame, which Ianto remembered as being the nearest town. He bounded to the top deck, nearly overbalancing when the bus set off. It trundled through the countryside, into a shower that got heavier as they progressed and before he knew it they were in the town centre, such as it was. The rain was now persistent and running down the back of his neck, so he walked out of town until he passed a bed and breakfast with a notice in the window saying that they didn’t accept Visa, and decided that that was the perfect place to stay for the night.
He got a room to himself, but the bathroom was shared with the other occupants of the B&B. Not that there were any. The couple who ran it were long-since retired, and it had been nearly as long since they got a new customer. They got the same people coming back every year, they told him, and they were always full for the festival. It didn’t really matter. He’d paid his twenty pounds, got a room with a bed – for the first time since he left Jack – and they were going to feed him in the morning.
As the shower was available and not in the swimming baths three bus stops away, Ianto grabbed his washbag out of his rucksack and they towel that had been left on the bed, kicked off his boots and padded across the hall in his socks. He’d nearly run out of clean clothes and, although it wasn’t high on his list of things to worry about, he wanted to do something about it. Shedding them felt better than it should have, and he didn’t dare sniff them to see what they smelt like, so he kicked them into a pile by the door and afforded himself the luxury of a bath.
Steam curled up around him as he sank into the hot water, and he stifled a moan at the feel of his tense muscles relaxing in the heat. He ached from his toes to his shoulders after a week of sleeping on the floor and lugging his bag around in the bitter cold, looking over his shoulder at every turn for pursuit, and there was a sting of loneliness that ran deeper than the cold or the aches, somewhere that a warm bath couldn’t touch.
He stayed there until the water turned cool, and made a dash across the hall in only a towel rather than put his grimy clothes back on. Redressed in his last clean clothes, and having put his washing into the care of the B&B owner because the nearest launderette was in Aylesbury, he wandered out into the dusk in search of food. The houses gave way to shops, pubs and take-aways as he wandered further into town, and the long queue in the fish and chip shop seduced him. Above the counter, a TV was showing the news in Chinese, and many of the people in the queue were watching it. He looked up, bemused by the apparent multilingual society found in Thame. A picture of Brian Green dominated half of the screen, and the person next to him nudged him. “What’s a Chinese news show doing talking about him? What’s he done this time, eh? They can have him, if they want him.”
“It’s a Chinese language channel, but UK based,” his mouth explained without referring to his brain. His brain was still translating and processing the news. “He’s dead. Police are treating it as suspicious.”
“How do you know that?”
He blinked back into the chip shop and raised an eyebrow at his neighbour. “I speak Mandarin. Well, roughly. Enough to get that much.”
“His children found him when they came home from school,” a girl behind the counter explained, shovelling chips onto a tray. It was a huge stack of chips, and Ianto’s scattered attention fixed on them and the enormous piece of fish. “They won’t rule out suicide, but they say they’re looking for a man on a motorbike.”
“Well, if it were any more specific they’d have to have him already,” a voice said, laced with acidic irony. “Good riddance, anyway.”
The person next in line to Ianto reached the counter, and he was able to lean against the wall. The world was moving too fast. Someone cleared their throat and he looked up into the worred face of the girl who’d translated the news for them. “Sorry, miles away. Fish and chips please.”
“Large or regular?”
He nodded over to the huge mountains of fish and chips that were now being wrapped up at the other end of the counter and smiled. “Whatever they’re having.”
The shop had a dining area with Formica tables and chairs from a school canteen. He found a seat in the corner, tucked out of the way, and picked at his dinner. Word was starting to spread about Green’s death, and the general opinion was that he’d killed himself, whatever the police said. It was a shame for his children, but good riddance to bad rubbish, sweep it under the carpet and forget about it. He couldn’t decide whether he loved or hated them for it.
X~X~X~X
He stayed in Thame a few days longer than he’d planned, until he couldn’t justify the risk any longer. The thaw at the start of the month had been a ruse, and the weather was now bitterly cold, with biting winds and flurries of near-freezing rain that sought out every gap in his clothing, even when he was sure there weren’t any, and the footpaths were slick with ice and slush from the roads. Faced with uncertain lodgings when he got to Oxford and the choice between that and the simple pleasures of a very comfortable - if empty - bed and a local population who wouldn’t have cared if he had actually killed Brian Green, he’d delayed it for too long, and justified it by spending hours in the library, poring over books on local history for clues.
Mrs Manners knocked on the door and brought a basket of clothes into the room. “I’ve got the last of your washing, Andrew. Are you sure you have to go, though? It’s been so nice having you around the house.”
He smiled up at her and got up from his crouch, grimacing when his knees protested. “And it’s been wonderful being here, but I do have to go. Thank you for the washing.”
“Oh, it’s the least I could do, pet. You wouldn’t believe the trouble we had with that door. Never thought it could be so simple.” She sighed. “Dennis has never been one for the simple solutions.”
“Well, you know what to do next time.” He collected together his things from the basket and packed them in the bag, squeezed around what was already in there. “And I’m sure Ian next door will help you if you tell him what the problem is.”
“Yes, but he’s not as cute as you are.”
Ianto laughed and straightened up, picking his bag up and hoicking it onto one shoulder. He dug his wallet out of a pocket and counted out a hundred pounds and held it out to her. “There we go, Sheila. Thank you so much for a wonderful stay.”
She tucked it into the pocket of her jeans and stepped back out of the doorway. “You will come back, won’t you?”
“I promise.” He bent down and kissed her cheek, then preceded her down the stairs to the front door. “Take care of yourself in this weather, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes.” She waved him off. “Enjoy London, dear.”
He walked up the high street to the main bus stop and got on the first bus that came past. It took him back through Towersey, past abandoned police tape that fluttered in the breeze, past the pub with the bike still sitting under the tree. The village was eerily quiet in the frosty morning, the harsh lines of bare trees standing out stark against silvered fields. He settled down in his seat at the back of the bus, wrapping his scarf over his face and tucking his hands into his armpits. It bounced and rattled through the narrow lanes, through sleepy villages where Christmas decorations still hung in some windows and past empty bus stops with frozen puddles.
The final stop was at the bus station in High Wycombe. It was a thriving metropolis compared to Thame, and the busy crowd didn’t spare him a glance, too absorbed in their own business and heads bent to the floor to keep out of the wind and rain. He wrapped his scarf tighter around his face and shrugged his shoulders, striding down the street. The shoppers pressed in on him, hurrying on with their errands to get home before darkness or more snow fell, but every time someone looked towards him or bumped against him he flinched.
He spent the afternoon in the graveyard, sheltering under the enveloping cover of an ancient yew tree, and emerged when night fell. The gates had been locked, so he found a damaged section of wall and scrambled over. It was eerily quiet now, and the first squall of rain drove the last few lingering shoppers back to their homes just as he got back to the centre of town. He stopped in an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant until they closed, and then picked his way through the town again.
Thame and safety seemed a very long way away when the teenagers re-emerged, most of them wearing too little for the cold weather and drinking too much. A group of them hurled abuse at him as he passed them and threw empty bottles at him, and he scuttled out of their way into a side street. Loud music boomed from the windows of a bar above an abandoned shop, and, after making sure no one was coming, he used a Torchwood lockpick to let himself into the shop.
Damp had seeped in through the chipboard over the windows and broken glass littered the floor. He checked again that the door was once again locked and picked his way across the glass carefully, hearing the crunch under his boots. The music pounded through the floor as a rumble of noise, and he extended his hands to feel for the wall in the absolute darkness. Once he found it he pressed his back against it and sank to the floor to feel through his bag for his torch. Its dim light only served to highlight his dismal surroundings and the feeling of cold damp, and even his sleeping bag did little to keep away the chill that ran bone-deep.
He hadn’t slept by the time cold light filtered through from the back room. A grimy window had been left uncovered, and the sunlight crept in from the yard between the buildings. Ianto dragged himself to his feet and repacked his bag, settling it on sore shoulders and letting himself out onto the street again. No one was around to see him until he got onto the main high street, where teenagers and younger children hurried through on their way to school, kicking their feet through frozen puddles and trudging through slush. A greasy café provided him with a mug of terrible coffee and an equally bad fry-up, and let him linger until the shops opened. He left half the coffee and stopped off at the 99p Store before anyone else got there to buy a pack of gel pens, a money tin, a pack of coloured paper and a roll of tape, as well as a handful of chocolate bars, a pack of sandwiches and a couple of unchilled bottles of drink. A bus pulled up outside just as he finished paying, and he hurried out to get on it without looking at where it was going.
X~X~X~X
Reading was even more of a shock than High Wycombe had been. He stopped into a pub first to tidy himself up in the toilets and get a meal that didn’t taste of regret, and as he sat at his table waiting for his food the TV started showing the news. The bad e-fit of him was back and he was still on the run, now very definitely the person who murdered Brian Green. Suicide, the reporter told him, had been categorically ruled out.
The police were looking for a young man named Ianto Jones, whose family had got caught up in the defeat of the 456 and, regrettably, his partner’s nephew had been a victim. The murder of Brian Green was the act of a desperate man, driven to revenge by the destruction of his family on the Government’s orders. Ianto absorbed it and let it wash over him with waves of resignation.
Someone at the next table leaned over to nudge him, and he found he was too tired to react other than to stare at them. The man didn’t notice, nudging Ianto again and pointing at the TV. “You want to watch out, mate. The police will be down on you in a shot. You look just like him.” He sighed and held out the tin that he’d just finished, and the man took it off him. “If I had a pound for every time...” he had to turn it back to read the whole thing again. “If I had a pound for every time someone told me I looked like Ianto Jones, I’d give it all to charity.” He laughed and dug a pound out of his pocket, rattling the tin and hearing the change from Ianto’s lunch. “Sounds like you’re doing well, mate. That’s clever, that is. Who’s it going to?”
Ianto forced a smile and accepted the tin back. “Probably Comic Relief,” he decided out loud. “We could all do with a laugh.”
He emerged from the pub not long after and carried along the street, dragging his feet through the puddles and keeping his head down. People jostled him on their way past and glared at him for getting in their way, but he ignored them all and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, finding shelter. As long as it was light and busy there was nothing he could do but walk, and his weary feet carried him on a slow, meandering route out of the city centre and into the inner city, into the streets of empty shops and neglected houses. A fierce, screamed argument emanating from an open window startled him, and he pressed himself into a doorway whilst he calmed his breathing and took stock of his surroundings .
The scene was familiar from every industrial city he’d ever been to; worn-down houses with chipped and peeling paint around water-warped doors, grubby and potholed streets between them lined with well-used cars, windows either boarded and blind or sparkling clean. A door slammed and the argument ceased, pushing him out of his doorway and onwards. His skin crawled and he felt eyes on him, following him down the street . A single quiet footstep highlighted the sounds of someone not wanting to be heard, and he tucked his head down rather than give in to the urge to look behind him. When he got into a side alley between the houses his heart was racing, pounding against his chest, and his breaths were coming short and sharp, wrenching painfully through his throat. He clawed at the wall behind him with one hand and drew his gun, clenching it against his side and tilting his head back to catch his breath and to improve his sight down the alley.
A shadow fell across the end of the alley, and then a young man stepped into it and starting advancing on him, drawing a gun of his own. Ianto shrank back down the alley away from him. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
“Ianto Jones...” the man called in a sing-song Essex accent that grated on Ianto’s nerves. “End of the road, Ianto Jones. You got one mistake, you made it. Now we’ve got you.”
He tipped his head back against the bricks and growled. “Fancy telling me what it was? I’m not supposed to be anywhere near Reading.”
“That would be telling.”
“And I would be asking.” He raised his gun and shot the guy before he could move again. He crumpled into a heap at the entrance to the alley and Ianto hurried over to check his pulse. “I’m sorry,” he whispered when he couldn't find one. He pinched the bridge of his nose and hunched over the body for a moment, all he could spare before he had to get up and away from the scene.
He kept walking away, further and further, as far as he could go before exhaustion forced him into a derelict factory, where he huddled in a corner and wept for the man he’d killed.
X~X~X~X
It rained the next day; hammering torrents of water that spilled off gutters and plastered his hair and clothes against him. Deep puddles formed in his path and the water splashed into his boots, soaking his already damp and filthy socks. His clothes and rucksack became so much heavier when waterlogged, and after the sleepless, cold, uncomfortable night he’d spent, every step was a chore. He passed the station and bought a ticket to Inverness, the furthest point he could think of, and hunched on the platform to wait for the first train that came along. The headline on the Metro screamed at him, but he ignored it in favour of stumbling onto the train and trying to tidy himself up before one of the self-absorbed commuters took time from their impossibly important self-contemplation to notice him. No one did.
He got off at the next station, still in Reading, and decided to make his way North, as per his ticket. The Southampton train, bound for Edinburgh, was due in in a few minutes, so he got a coffee at the station Starbucks and cradled it against his chest whilst he waited. The heat soaked through his gloves and warmed his hands at last, and by the time the train rolled in he felt human enough to walk among the other passengers.
It was the lull after the rush, so he was able to grab a window seat and set his bag down on the seat next to him, wrapping one arm around it and leaning against the window with his cheek pressed against the glass and his breath fogging the view. The train rolled through the edge of the town, past the back fences of neat gardens, and then into the damp, grey countryside along the banks of the Thames. His fingers plucked at the zip cover on his bag, and he kept his face to the window, away from anyone coming past to the toilet.
The conductor came past and looked at him closely as he punched his ticket, but he said nothing in response to Ianto’s weary smile, just confirmed the time they were due in Edinburgh and moved on down the aisle. Ianto put his head back and closed his eyes, tightening his fingers in the handle of his bag. When they pulled in at the next station he didn’t stop to check where they were, just grabbed his bag, tugged his hood up and pushed his way through onto the platform.
Behind him, the train pulled away, and he looked around for a sign of where he’d arrived and a departures board to find the next place he could get to on his ticket. The second sign he passed brought him up short, and he swore under his breath. He’d got off in Oxford.
He was torn, caught between fleeing for his own safety and the knowledge that he couldn’t help Steven if he was killed, and knowing that every day he spent searching was another day Steven was their prisoner and that he couldn’t live with the guilt of hiding. Someone bumped into him and he wheeled away from them, turning on his heel to find the exit and drawing the lockpick. He touched the device to one of the ticket barriers, keeping himself between it and the bored-looking guard, and headed into Oxford to find accommodation and his next lead.
X~X~X~X
The tin filled up too quickly over the next few days, whatever he did to avoid people. Every street seemed to have a ‘wanted’ poster warning people to stay away from him, and yet they flocked to him, being bought off time and time again with the request for money. At the same time as being exhilarated by it, he could feel it wearing him down. His home was a derelict pub without electricity, gas or water; food was cold and rare, bought on the days when he felt able to drag himself out of his shelter and walk to the 24-hour Tesco with the weight of his bag weighing him down; and his research was halted by the lack of direction and the hopeless isolation and fear ingrained in his situation. When, one morning, a young couple stopped by the table he was working at in the library and asked him if he was the man who killed Brian Green, and giving them the tin and lying his way out of it seemed like almost too much effort, he knew he’d lost.
He trudged out of the library, no closer to finding Steven and with the weight of the extorted money pulling him down. A car drove past him through a puddle, sending a wave up to his knees to that it soaked his jeans and ran down into his boots, and it crossed the line to more than he could take. The girl behind the bar in the next pub he passed served him two doubles of Whisky without asking questions, and he huddled over it in a corner with a mobile in his hand and his thumb hovering over the call button. The news caught his attention, showing the same story it had been for the week since he got to Oxford, but with an update. Ianto Jones had been seen at a motorway service station near Luton.
The Whisky burned down his throat and warmed him inside as he sat up straighter to watch the news. It took him a moment to recognise the stony-faced woman giving the press announcement, but once he placed her he had to dig his nails into the palms of his hand to control himself. He had only seen her three times, twice in the ruins of Torchwood when she’d stood over what had been his home and given the orders for Jack’s body to be removed from it, and once when he’d rescued Jack from his concrete prison and she’d tried to stop them. Seeing her again now so cool and angry, knowing what she’d done to his family, made his blood boil with fresh determination.
At the bottom of the screen, the subtitles rolled a little behind the dialogue. As always, there were interesting spellings and missed words, but one discrepancy caught his eye. His lip-reading was poor, but good enough to recognise the words “Wednesday the sixth”, and yet the subtitles had read “Monday the eleventh”. He admired their use of technology, even as he loathed and detested everything they stood for, and raised his glass in a subtle salute before he downed it and stumbled out of the pub to find his way to the meeting point.
Next chapter
Chapter Title: Chapter 3
Challenge/Fest: Ianto Big Bang
Rating: M
Dedication: Thanks to
mcparrot for the awesome beta work, and to xxxholiclover and a_silver_story for the artsesSummary: Although the crisis with the 456 is over, Torchwood’s problems definitely aren’t. The government is meddling, Jack is pregnant and they don’t trust the team they’ve been assigned. When they cut loose from Torchwood, things get worse rather than better, and Ianto soon finds himself adrift from his loved ones and on the run, chasing down the chance that Steven’s death might not have been what it seemed.
Characters: Ianto, Jack and Alice, Steven, Agent Johnson
Contains: Pregnancy, violence, death, drug use, child in harm’s way, Ianto/OFC. COE compliant
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
Ianto knocked on the door of a boarded-up warehouse just outside the regenerated docklands area and stuffed his hands back into his pockets to keep them warm. It had taken him a couple of days to find his way into the squatting network, and they’d eventually pointed him to a newly-squatted space that would welcome anyone who could use a screwdriver. Slush from the street clung to his boots and soaked into the legs of his jeans, whilst tiny flakes of fresh snow settled in his hair. When the door finally opened he was studied by a young person, possibly a man, possibly not human at all, with blown pupils and greasy hair that hung over his shoulders. Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. “Is this The Cake Factory?”
The person blinked at him and scowled. “Are y’a pig?” they asked, in a slurred voice that Ianto was almost certain was that of a human male.
He raised his eyebrow even further and looked over his own shoulder at his backpack, then back at the person. “Do I look like a pig?”
“I dunno. It takes all sorts. Come in pig.” He opened the door wider and let him into the cavernous warehouse space, calling out, “Piggy come to call.”
Heads snapped up, all of them human and in varying stages of cleanliness and awareness, and Ianto shrugged at them helplessly . “Don’t ask me,” he told them. “Angie sent me over here, said you had space and a use for a screwdriver.”
The crowd relaxed at that, and several of them for to their feet to welcome him. “Ignore Tosser,” a gangly young man told him. He extended a hand that was as long and thin as the rest of him to Ianto. “I’m Scully; nice to meet you.”
“No, really?” He shook Scully’s hand and grinned. “My boyfriend used to be Mulder .”
“Yeah? Well I guess you’re Mulder this time.” He clapped him on the shoulder and tugged him over to the circle. “Guys, this is Mulder. Chef’ll be back in a bit, he says,” he added to Ianto. They sat on the floor and Ianto declined the bong he was offered. “So what brings you to us, apart from your screwdriver?”
“Nowhere better than London, is there?” He looked around and they nodded. “Shit goes down here.”
“Shit’s going down everywhere, my friend,” a girl across from him told him. She gestured expansively with the bong and leaned back on one hand. “One day, the downtrodden of this country are going to rise up and crush the corporate scum. And we’ll be there. Wherever it is, we’ll be there.”
“Torchwood are the worst,” another girl opined. “Tramping over us and denying they exist for years. What are they for?”
There was a general mutter of agreement, and Ianto shifted uncomfortably. He declined the bong yet again and looked up at the ceiling. “This is a Torchwood place, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and they’re not shifting us,” the same girl muttered, without conviction. “We’re taking it back for the masses who’ve put up with their shit for too long. We’re gonna expose them… once we get the information off the computer, that is.”
“They left a computer here?”
“Sure.” She gestured with the bong to an office off the main hall. “We use the guest account to update the Facebook group. Taking it back.”
He nodded. “I’ll see if I can do anything with it, but first… do you have a toilet here, or do we use the pub?”
X~X~X~X
The Cake Factory, named for reasons long forgotten, was home to a chaotic mix of university drop-outs, drug addicts and anarcho-communists. It didn’t have a hierarchy or a leader, but it did have someone who knew what was going on at least some of the time, and that was Chef. He claimed that he’d been conceived the night before 144 Piccadilly fell and raised in Frestonia, that he’d danced at Live Aid and spent the years before it going from picket line to picket line to join the battles. Ianto wasn’t sure that the figures quite added up, but Chef told a good story and he was able to keep track of what day of the week it was so that they went scavenging in the right places. The Cake lived on what was thrown away by shops and ‘liberated’ on late night journeys in the dark, and Ianto quickly became an essential tool for their trips, for his talent with a lock pick and his complete lack of restraint when it came to breaking the law and getting his hands dirty.
He walked alongside Chef one night when they were returning to the factory, laden down with a depressing amount of perfectly good food that the supermarkets couldn’t sell. Despite his contentment with the life, he’d so far found nothing to point him towards Steven, and he was running out of time before he was found again. The handles of the bags he carried cut into his fingers, and he shifted them into one hand so he could flex the other. “How much further is it?” he asked Chef. “I can’t even work out where we are.”
“Just leaving Rotherhythe. Ten minutes off.”
“My fingers are going to hate me,” he chuckled. “They’re not used to carrier bags.”
“Hands that hold guns aren’t often good at the day-to-day,” Chef commented.
Ianto shot him a look as they passed under a streetlight. “What makes you think I hold a gun?”
“The way you react when Bottle mentions Torchwood. You don’t agree with her.” Ianto heard the bags shift as if he were shrugging. “It wasn’t hard. You’re not here to squat – you’re here to hide.”
“Yep.” He put his bags down against a fence and Chef stopped with him. “Does anyone else know?”
“I haven’t mentioned it to them.” There was the click of a lighter and then Ianto was left blinking away the after-images of the flame whilst the tip of Chef’s cigarette glowed in the darkness. “What are you looking for?”
He closed his eyes and leaned against the fence. “A child. My nephew, of sorts. I’m not married to his uncle, and he’s not his uncle, but he’s nearly my nephew.” The cigarette glowed brighter for a moment and bobbed. Ianto found himself wishing that a car would go past or that someone would turn a light on across the street, just to give him a bit of light. “Do you know what they did to defeat the aliens that came in July?”
“No, I don’t.” Chef offered him the cigarette, and their hands brushed together when he took it. “What did they do?”
“They took a child from his mother, ran a signal through his brain and broadcast it to them.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and passed it back. “Or so they told his grieving family.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
“I’ve heard rumours.” He looked at the patch of darker night and the bobbing glow. “And now I need to know the truth.”
The air filled with another cloud of pungent smoke, and then there was a rustle of bags. Ianto looked down to the white bags at his own feet and crouched cautiously to pick them up. When he wasn’t captured or murdered for letting his guard down and Chef set off in the direction of The Cake, he followed behind with heavy steps. The next street was lit, and the group were huddled at the edge of the shadows, waiting for them. Chef nodded a greeting and glanced at Ianto. “We just had to shift some stuff around. Bag splittage was occurring.”
“Fucking capitalism,” Bottle muttered. There was a rumble of agreement and then they trudged on towards home.
X~X~X~X
“You’re leaving.” Chef dropped onto the chair that Ianto’s socks had just vacated and watched him tightening the straps on his rucksack. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes I do.” He buckled the top flap down and tightened that as well, then sat on the floor next to it. “I can’t trust you.” Chef looked about to protest, but Ianto cut him off, “No, I can’t. Would you, in my position?”
Chef gave him a wry smile. “Where will you go?”
“Not decided yet. Somewhere…” He sighed and lifted the bag. “God, that’s heavy. Anyway.”
“Mulder.” Chef held out his hand. “It was good having you, whatever your reasons.”
“It was good being here.” They walked to the door and Chef let him out. He hovered on the doorstep, facing the rain, and turned back with a smile. “And now, if anyone asks, you can say that Ianto Jones was here, and he went, and you don’t know where he’s gone. You can tell them what I want, and that I’m looking for my answers. And if the person asking after me is calling himself Captain Jack Harkness… tell him I love him.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with passing that sort of message on; it’s a bit personal and morbid.” Chef pulled a face. “I’ll do my best, though. Was it Birmingham you said you were heading for?”
“It might have been.” He saluted and turned away again. “Look after them, Chef. Let them eat cake.”
He walked through the night and into the morning, eventually stopping at a train station to read the Metro. It was the usual drivel, but it gave him an excuse to keep his head down whilst he ate a bag of fresh doughnuts. The station filled and emptied around him repeatedly, and he ignored all of them. An article on the fifth page caught his eye, and he lifted it to read it more carefully.
”Former Prime Minister Brian Green lost yesterday’s by-election for the seat of Henley. The disgraced former politician didn’t even win over enough voters to get back his deposit, getting only 91 votes - 0.3% of votes cast. Neighbours in the rural village of Towersey say that he won’t have any support in the village…”
“Towersey…” he muttered. “Why is it always places I’ve never heard of?” He shoved the last doughnut in his mouth and tucked his paper under his arm, swinging onto the train a moment before the doors closed.
X~X~X~X
Ianto was good at waiting. Torchwood had always involved long hours of waiting for the next sighting or the next victim, days of poring over reports and files for clues, weeks of waiting for the shoe to drop; and Jack wasn’t always available to keep him distracted. He’d perfected a state of zen in which he could process and respond to all information he was provided with whilst not thinking of anything much.
Brian Green, on the other hand, was oblivious to everything around him as he stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. He dropped it, spilling the water across the floor and his feet, when Ianto spoke behind him, “Terrible for the environment, that. I’m told that the tap water is safe.”
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my kitchen?” He sounded unsure of himself, and squinted at Ianto. “Are you with the press?”
“Nope.” He tossed an apple from hand to hand and watched Green’s eyes track it. “I’m with Torchwood.” He caught and held the apple and Green’s face paled. “The phones are cut off, the door is locked and I’ve stolen your keys… and your children won’t be home from school for hours, will they?”
The other man sank to the floor and sat in the puddle of spilled water. His eyes were red-rimmed and heavily shadowed, his hair was matted and stuck to his scalp, and the weight he’d lost showed in the sag and pallor of his skin. “What do you want?” he asked again. “I don’t know anything, I never knew anything! I just did what I was told. And… and then they threw me away like so much garbage, just like you.”
Ianto seethed, but he was careful to give Green his most reassuring smile as he came towards him. “There, this is what I want to know.” He pulled a chair over and sat on it, which still left him towering over Green, but much closer. “It’s all we can do, isn’t it? Following orders from higher up, however high those orders go. It’s not up to us to question them.”
He nodded, gaze fixed on Ianto. “They’re so powerful. So powerful, you can’t imagine.”
“Oh, I think I can, Brian.” He leaned forwards and rested one hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Who was it, Brian? Who told you what they’d done to save the world?”
“I…” He looked around. “I can’t, they’ll… my children.”
“And what about Alice Carter, Brian? Didn’t her son deserve protecting?” He squeezed again and his thumb dug into Green’s shoulder. “Let me protect her for you.”
He cried out and nodded, and rubbed at his shoulder when Ianto released him. “There’s a department, off the records, tasked with protecting… things. Secrets.”
“Government assassins?”
“No!” He grimaced, dropping his head back against the counter. “Not usually. They just… extradition and torture,” he rushed out when Ianto leant forwards again. “We weren’t supposed to know they even existed.”
Ianto sucked in a deep breath and sat back in his seat. Green still cowered away from him, and whimpered when he stood up. “Do you know where they are?” he asked. “Brian!”
“I don’t know!” he sobbed, and Ianto believed him. “They’re near Cambridge, somewhere… or Oxford. I don’t know which. I don’t know any more!”
“You’re pathetic and you make my skin crawl,” Ianto told him. He collected his rucksack from next to the sofa and unlocked the door, throwing the keys at Green to make him jump. “And I didn’t vote for you.”
He strode from the house, swinging the keys of a stolen motorbike on one finger. In full view of the kitchen, he pulled on the helmet and revved the engine before roaring off down the road. He enjoyed the feel of speed down to the crossroads, all the way to the pub car park just beyond it. There were a few cars already there, so he tucked the bike in behind one of them, in the shade of a bare tree, and shed the jacket and helmet again. These he stashed in the hedge, and then he left them all behind and went to sit in the pub with a cheese burger and a pint, and the surveillance kit out on the table in front of him pretending to be a laptop.
The bug on the phone line sent him an alert that it was connected, and he picked up the headphones to listen to the conversation. Green was telling an unnamed operative, a man, that Ianto had been and threatened him, but he hadn’t told him anything, and then Ianto had left on a motorbike in full leathers, heading for Cambridge. The operative promised that someone would be there soon and hung up, leaving Green talking to an empty line.
Ianto snorted and flipped the lid closed, pushing the burger away so that he could pack his bag again. He drained the glass and took it back to the bar to ask about the buses. There was one due from outside the pub in ten minutes, so he killed time in the toilets, mostly trying to navigate the cramped space with his backpack, and went out to catch it.
The bus was going to Thame, which Ianto remembered as being the nearest town. He bounded to the top deck, nearly overbalancing when the bus set off. It trundled through the countryside, into a shower that got heavier as they progressed and before he knew it they were in the town centre, such as it was. The rain was now persistent and running down the back of his neck, so he walked out of town until he passed a bed and breakfast with a notice in the window saying that they didn’t accept Visa, and decided that that was the perfect place to stay for the night.
He got a room to himself, but the bathroom was shared with the other occupants of the B&B. Not that there were any. The couple who ran it were long-since retired, and it had been nearly as long since they got a new customer. They got the same people coming back every year, they told him, and they were always full for the festival. It didn’t really matter. He’d paid his twenty pounds, got a room with a bed – for the first time since he left Jack – and they were going to feed him in the morning.
As the shower was available and not in the swimming baths three bus stops away, Ianto grabbed his washbag out of his rucksack and they towel that had been left on the bed, kicked off his boots and padded across the hall in his socks. He’d nearly run out of clean clothes and, although it wasn’t high on his list of things to worry about, he wanted to do something about it. Shedding them felt better than it should have, and he didn’t dare sniff them to see what they smelt like, so he kicked them into a pile by the door and afforded himself the luxury of a bath.
Steam curled up around him as he sank into the hot water, and he stifled a moan at the feel of his tense muscles relaxing in the heat. He ached from his toes to his shoulders after a week of sleeping on the floor and lugging his bag around in the bitter cold, looking over his shoulder at every turn for pursuit, and there was a sting of loneliness that ran deeper than the cold or the aches, somewhere that a warm bath couldn’t touch.
He stayed there until the water turned cool, and made a dash across the hall in only a towel rather than put his grimy clothes back on. Redressed in his last clean clothes, and having put his washing into the care of the B&B owner because the nearest launderette was in Aylesbury, he wandered out into the dusk in search of food. The houses gave way to shops, pubs and take-aways as he wandered further into town, and the long queue in the fish and chip shop seduced him. Above the counter, a TV was showing the news in Chinese, and many of the people in the queue were watching it. He looked up, bemused by the apparent multilingual society found in Thame. A picture of Brian Green dominated half of the screen, and the person next to him nudged him. “What’s a Chinese news show doing talking about him? What’s he done this time, eh? They can have him, if they want him.”
“It’s a Chinese language channel, but UK based,” his mouth explained without referring to his brain. His brain was still translating and processing the news. “He’s dead. Police are treating it as suspicious.”
“How do you know that?”
He blinked back into the chip shop and raised an eyebrow at his neighbour. “I speak Mandarin. Well, roughly. Enough to get that much.”
“His children found him when they came home from school,” a girl behind the counter explained, shovelling chips onto a tray. It was a huge stack of chips, and Ianto’s scattered attention fixed on them and the enormous piece of fish. “They won’t rule out suicide, but they say they’re looking for a man on a motorbike.”
“Well, if it were any more specific they’d have to have him already,” a voice said, laced with acidic irony. “Good riddance, anyway.”
The person next in line to Ianto reached the counter, and he was able to lean against the wall. The world was moving too fast. Someone cleared their throat and he looked up into the worred face of the girl who’d translated the news for them. “Sorry, miles away. Fish and chips please.”
“Large or regular?”
He nodded over to the huge mountains of fish and chips that were now being wrapped up at the other end of the counter and smiled. “Whatever they’re having.”
The shop had a dining area with Formica tables and chairs from a school canteen. He found a seat in the corner, tucked out of the way, and picked at his dinner. Word was starting to spread about Green’s death, and the general opinion was that he’d killed himself, whatever the police said. It was a shame for his children, but good riddance to bad rubbish, sweep it under the carpet and forget about it. He couldn’t decide whether he loved or hated them for it.
X~X~X~X
He stayed in Thame a few days longer than he’d planned, until he couldn’t justify the risk any longer. The thaw at the start of the month had been a ruse, and the weather was now bitterly cold, with biting winds and flurries of near-freezing rain that sought out every gap in his clothing, even when he was sure there weren’t any, and the footpaths were slick with ice and slush from the roads. Faced with uncertain lodgings when he got to Oxford and the choice between that and the simple pleasures of a very comfortable - if empty - bed and a local population who wouldn’t have cared if he had actually killed Brian Green, he’d delayed it for too long, and justified it by spending hours in the library, poring over books on local history for clues.
Mrs Manners knocked on the door and brought a basket of clothes into the room. “I’ve got the last of your washing, Andrew. Are you sure you have to go, though? It’s been so nice having you around the house.”
He smiled up at her and got up from his crouch, grimacing when his knees protested. “And it’s been wonderful being here, but I do have to go. Thank you for the washing.”
“Oh, it’s the least I could do, pet. You wouldn’t believe the trouble we had with that door. Never thought it could be so simple.” She sighed. “Dennis has never been one for the simple solutions.”
“Well, you know what to do next time.” He collected together his things from the basket and packed them in the bag, squeezed around what was already in there. “And I’m sure Ian next door will help you if you tell him what the problem is.”
“Yes, but he’s not as cute as you are.”
Ianto laughed and straightened up, picking his bag up and hoicking it onto one shoulder. He dug his wallet out of a pocket and counted out a hundred pounds and held it out to her. “There we go, Sheila. Thank you so much for a wonderful stay.”
She tucked it into the pocket of her jeans and stepped back out of the doorway. “You will come back, won’t you?”
“I promise.” He bent down and kissed her cheek, then preceded her down the stairs to the front door. “Take care of yourself in this weather, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes.” She waved him off. “Enjoy London, dear.”
He walked up the high street to the main bus stop and got on the first bus that came past. It took him back through Towersey, past abandoned police tape that fluttered in the breeze, past the pub with the bike still sitting under the tree. The village was eerily quiet in the frosty morning, the harsh lines of bare trees standing out stark against silvered fields. He settled down in his seat at the back of the bus, wrapping his scarf over his face and tucking his hands into his armpits. It bounced and rattled through the narrow lanes, through sleepy villages where Christmas decorations still hung in some windows and past empty bus stops with frozen puddles.
The final stop was at the bus station in High Wycombe. It was a thriving metropolis compared to Thame, and the busy crowd didn’t spare him a glance, too absorbed in their own business and heads bent to the floor to keep out of the wind and rain. He wrapped his scarf tighter around his face and shrugged his shoulders, striding down the street. The shoppers pressed in on him, hurrying on with their errands to get home before darkness or more snow fell, but every time someone looked towards him or bumped against him he flinched.
He spent the afternoon in the graveyard, sheltering under the enveloping cover of an ancient yew tree, and emerged when night fell. The gates had been locked, so he found a damaged section of wall and scrambled over. It was eerily quiet now, and the first squall of rain drove the last few lingering shoppers back to their homes just as he got back to the centre of town. He stopped in an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant until they closed, and then picked his way through the town again.
Thame and safety seemed a very long way away when the teenagers re-emerged, most of them wearing too little for the cold weather and drinking too much. A group of them hurled abuse at him as he passed them and threw empty bottles at him, and he scuttled out of their way into a side street. Loud music boomed from the windows of a bar above an abandoned shop, and, after making sure no one was coming, he used a Torchwood lockpick to let himself into the shop.
Damp had seeped in through the chipboard over the windows and broken glass littered the floor. He checked again that the door was once again locked and picked his way across the glass carefully, hearing the crunch under his boots. The music pounded through the floor as a rumble of noise, and he extended his hands to feel for the wall in the absolute darkness. Once he found it he pressed his back against it and sank to the floor to feel through his bag for his torch. Its dim light only served to highlight his dismal surroundings and the feeling of cold damp, and even his sleeping bag did little to keep away the chill that ran bone-deep.
He hadn’t slept by the time cold light filtered through from the back room. A grimy window had been left uncovered, and the sunlight crept in from the yard between the buildings. Ianto dragged himself to his feet and repacked his bag, settling it on sore shoulders and letting himself out onto the street again. No one was around to see him until he got onto the main high street, where teenagers and younger children hurried through on their way to school, kicking their feet through frozen puddles and trudging through slush. A greasy café provided him with a mug of terrible coffee and an equally bad fry-up, and let him linger until the shops opened. He left half the coffee and stopped off at the 99p Store before anyone else got there to buy a pack of gel pens, a money tin, a pack of coloured paper and a roll of tape, as well as a handful of chocolate bars, a pack of sandwiches and a couple of unchilled bottles of drink. A bus pulled up outside just as he finished paying, and he hurried out to get on it without looking at where it was going.
X~X~X~X
Reading was even more of a shock than High Wycombe had been. He stopped into a pub first to tidy himself up in the toilets and get a meal that didn’t taste of regret, and as he sat at his table waiting for his food the TV started showing the news. The bad e-fit of him was back and he was still on the run, now very definitely the person who murdered Brian Green. Suicide, the reporter told him, had been categorically ruled out.
The police were looking for a young man named Ianto Jones, whose family had got caught up in the defeat of the 456 and, regrettably, his partner’s nephew had been a victim. The murder of Brian Green was the act of a desperate man, driven to revenge by the destruction of his family on the Government’s orders. Ianto absorbed it and let it wash over him with waves of resignation.
Someone at the next table leaned over to nudge him, and he found he was too tired to react other than to stare at them. The man didn’t notice, nudging Ianto again and pointing at the TV. “You want to watch out, mate. The police will be down on you in a shot. You look just like him.” He sighed and held out the tin that he’d just finished, and the man took it off him. “If I had a pound for every time...” he had to turn it back to read the whole thing again. “If I had a pound for every time someone told me I looked like Ianto Jones, I’d give it all to charity.” He laughed and dug a pound out of his pocket, rattling the tin and hearing the change from Ianto’s lunch. “Sounds like you’re doing well, mate. That’s clever, that is. Who’s it going to?”
Ianto forced a smile and accepted the tin back. “Probably Comic Relief,” he decided out loud. “We could all do with a laugh.”
He emerged from the pub not long after and carried along the street, dragging his feet through the puddles and keeping his head down. People jostled him on their way past and glared at him for getting in their way, but he ignored them all and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, finding shelter. As long as it was light and busy there was nothing he could do but walk, and his weary feet carried him on a slow, meandering route out of the city centre and into the inner city, into the streets of empty shops and neglected houses. A fierce, screamed argument emanating from an open window startled him, and he pressed himself into a doorway whilst he calmed his breathing and took stock of his surroundings .
The scene was familiar from every industrial city he’d ever been to; worn-down houses with chipped and peeling paint around water-warped doors, grubby and potholed streets between them lined with well-used cars, windows either boarded and blind or sparkling clean. A door slammed and the argument ceased, pushing him out of his doorway and onwards. His skin crawled and he felt eyes on him, following him down the street . A single quiet footstep highlighted the sounds of someone not wanting to be heard, and he tucked his head down rather than give in to the urge to look behind him. When he got into a side alley between the houses his heart was racing, pounding against his chest, and his breaths were coming short and sharp, wrenching painfully through his throat. He clawed at the wall behind him with one hand and drew his gun, clenching it against his side and tilting his head back to catch his breath and to improve his sight down the alley.
A shadow fell across the end of the alley, and then a young man stepped into it and starting advancing on him, drawing a gun of his own. Ianto shrank back down the alley away from him. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
“Ianto Jones...” the man called in a sing-song Essex accent that grated on Ianto’s nerves. “End of the road, Ianto Jones. You got one mistake, you made it. Now we’ve got you.”
He tipped his head back against the bricks and growled. “Fancy telling me what it was? I’m not supposed to be anywhere near Reading.”
“That would be telling.”
“And I would be asking.” He raised his gun and shot the guy before he could move again. He crumpled into a heap at the entrance to the alley and Ianto hurried over to check his pulse. “I’m sorry,” he whispered when he couldn't find one. He pinched the bridge of his nose and hunched over the body for a moment, all he could spare before he had to get up and away from the scene.
He kept walking away, further and further, as far as he could go before exhaustion forced him into a derelict factory, where he huddled in a corner and wept for the man he’d killed.
X~X~X~X
It rained the next day; hammering torrents of water that spilled off gutters and plastered his hair and clothes against him. Deep puddles formed in his path and the water splashed into his boots, soaking his already damp and filthy socks. His clothes and rucksack became so much heavier when waterlogged, and after the sleepless, cold, uncomfortable night he’d spent, every step was a chore. He passed the station and bought a ticket to Inverness, the furthest point he could think of, and hunched on the platform to wait for the first train that came along. The headline on the Metro screamed at him, but he ignored it in favour of stumbling onto the train and trying to tidy himself up before one of the self-absorbed commuters took time from their impossibly important self-contemplation to notice him. No one did.
He got off at the next station, still in Reading, and decided to make his way North, as per his ticket. The Southampton train, bound for Edinburgh, was due in in a few minutes, so he got a coffee at the station Starbucks and cradled it against his chest whilst he waited. The heat soaked through his gloves and warmed his hands at last, and by the time the train rolled in he felt human enough to walk among the other passengers.
It was the lull after the rush, so he was able to grab a window seat and set his bag down on the seat next to him, wrapping one arm around it and leaning against the window with his cheek pressed against the glass and his breath fogging the view. The train rolled through the edge of the town, past the back fences of neat gardens, and then into the damp, grey countryside along the banks of the Thames. His fingers plucked at the zip cover on his bag, and he kept his face to the window, away from anyone coming past to the toilet.
The conductor came past and looked at him closely as he punched his ticket, but he said nothing in response to Ianto’s weary smile, just confirmed the time they were due in Edinburgh and moved on down the aisle. Ianto put his head back and closed his eyes, tightening his fingers in the handle of his bag. When they pulled in at the next station he didn’t stop to check where they were, just grabbed his bag, tugged his hood up and pushed his way through onto the platform.
Behind him, the train pulled away, and he looked around for a sign of where he’d arrived and a departures board to find the next place he could get to on his ticket. The second sign he passed brought him up short, and he swore under his breath. He’d got off in Oxford.
He was torn, caught between fleeing for his own safety and the knowledge that he couldn’t help Steven if he was killed, and knowing that every day he spent searching was another day Steven was their prisoner and that he couldn’t live with the guilt of hiding. Someone bumped into him and he wheeled away from them, turning on his heel to find the exit and drawing the lockpick. He touched the device to one of the ticket barriers, keeping himself between it and the bored-looking guard, and headed into Oxford to find accommodation and his next lead.
X~X~X~X
The tin filled up too quickly over the next few days, whatever he did to avoid people. Every street seemed to have a ‘wanted’ poster warning people to stay away from him, and yet they flocked to him, being bought off time and time again with the request for money. At the same time as being exhilarated by it, he could feel it wearing him down. His home was a derelict pub without electricity, gas or water; food was cold and rare, bought on the days when he felt able to drag himself out of his shelter and walk to the 24-hour Tesco with the weight of his bag weighing him down; and his research was halted by the lack of direction and the hopeless isolation and fear ingrained in his situation. When, one morning, a young couple stopped by the table he was working at in the library and asked him if he was the man who killed Brian Green, and giving them the tin and lying his way out of it seemed like almost too much effort, he knew he’d lost.
He trudged out of the library, no closer to finding Steven and with the weight of the extorted money pulling him down. A car drove past him through a puddle, sending a wave up to his knees to that it soaked his jeans and ran down into his boots, and it crossed the line to more than he could take. The girl behind the bar in the next pub he passed served him two doubles of Whisky without asking questions, and he huddled over it in a corner with a mobile in his hand and his thumb hovering over the call button. The news caught his attention, showing the same story it had been for the week since he got to Oxford, but with an update. Ianto Jones had been seen at a motorway service station near Luton.
The Whisky burned down his throat and warmed him inside as he sat up straighter to watch the news. It took him a moment to recognise the stony-faced woman giving the press announcement, but once he placed her he had to dig his nails into the palms of his hand to control himself. He had only seen her three times, twice in the ruins of Torchwood when she’d stood over what had been his home and given the orders for Jack’s body to be removed from it, and once when he’d rescued Jack from his concrete prison and she’d tried to stop them. Seeing her again now so cool and angry, knowing what she’d done to his family, made his blood boil with fresh determination.
At the bottom of the screen, the subtitles rolled a little behind the dialogue. As always, there were interesting spellings and missed words, but one discrepancy caught his eye. His lip-reading was poor, but good enough to recognise the words “Wednesday the sixth”, and yet the subtitles had read “Monday the eleventh”. He admired their use of technology, even as he loathed and detested everything they stood for, and raised his glass in a subtle salute before he downed it and stumbled out of the pub to find his way to the meeting point.
Next chapter
