The Darkest Night Chapter 4
Dec. 7th, 2010 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Title: The Darkest Night
Chapter Title: Chapter 4
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.
From the bridge over the motorway, Ianto could see the marked police car at the entrance to the car park, and one of the guards in the car park itself. A set of stolen keys jingled in his gloved hand, and his step bounced as he wound his way through the crowd to the Travelodge. The clerk behind the counter looked up at him reluctantly, and stabbed at the keyboard with one finger. “Do you have a reservation... sir?”
“No, I don’t. Random stop,” he explained with a false smile. “Do you have any vacancies?”
“We won’t fill up till later,” he explained in the same bored drawl. “Don’t normally get people checking in before dark. It’ll have to be a double room.”
“Yep, that’s fine. Plenty of space.” He dug out his wallet and slid the card he’d selected onto the desk. It was one that Jack would be able to find if this all went wrong, but which he hoped wouldn’t set off any alarms. “I probably won’t stay all night. Is there an early checkout procedure?"”
The clerk had a room key out for him, and he pointed with it at the self-service machines against the wall. “Just swipe it, pay any balance left on the room and drop it in the slot.” He swiped it through the machine, tapped Ianto’s false details in with two fingers and without asking for ID, and then handed it over. “Have a nice stay.”
He smiled back and went back to the toilets to collect his rucksack, which he’d left locked in a cubicle. With that back on his back he slipped past the receptionist, who had turned his attention back to his phone, and padded down the corridor to his room. It was bare and simple - a bed, a desk with a TV and drink facilities and an en-suite bathroom. He dropped the bag onto the bed and fell forwards onto it, curling his fingers into the duvet and clinging to it until the urge to giggle had subsided.
When he persuaded himself to move again, he pulled himself from the bed and started unpacking his rucksack. He got everything spread out on the bed and selected the things he needed and needed to keep, then packed what he wouldn’t need into the rucksack again and tucked it under the desk. Out on the bed he now had the lockpick device, which used a magnetic field to recreate the motion of the key and also had an override for swipe-card locks; his guns and multitool; the surveillance kit with all the information he’d gathered on notes inside it; one change of clothes; a razor and shaving gel; the tablet computers and two of the mobile phones; all the money he had left; his wash bag; the decoy tin and a bottle of vodka. He took his jumper to the bathroom and tossed it in the bath, then poured half of the bottle of vodka over it so that it would smell of drink, and turned to the mirror to apply hair gel to mess his previously neat beard and hair. Once that was done he poured the rest of the bottle over his head and went to lie on the bed and watch TV whilst it dried.
He got bored with waiting and the nerves starting making an appearance again, so he grabbed the nearly-dry jumper from the bath, stuffed the lock pick, a phone and as much money as he could carry in his pockets and a gun down the pack of his pants, checked the knife in his boot and headed out the door in search of trouble. The hotel was as empty as the clerk had said, and he was able to slip out of a fire exit at the back and skirt around it, keeping to the walls until he got back into the main building. It was busy here again, and people were staring at him, so he went to Burger King and bought himself a meal with a large coffee, and sat at the counter, facing out.
The woman came to join him after a few minutes, parting the crowds without thought as she advanced on him. People stared at her and then at him, recognising him for who he was at last, and they scattered with muted panic. He smirked at them and stuffed the napkin in on top of the chips, grimacing at the greasy feel on his fingers. “I got your message,” he told her, finding his voice conveniently rough with disuse. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced, though.”
“You don’t need to know who I am.” She nodded at a family hurrying towards the exit. “Do you ever get frustrated by their tiny minds?”
“Nope. My life is all about letting them keep their minds small and safe.” He pulled a face at a sip of the bitter coffee and set it aside again. “Or it was, until someone blew it up.”
“If you leave now, we’ll let you,” she told him. “You can find Harkness, leave the country, and as long as you don’t come back and don’t talk to anyone, we won’t bother you.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair.” He attempted the coffee again. “Is he still evading you, then?”
“Harkness’s whereabouts are unknown,” she admitted. “And they can remain that way, if you take my offer.”
He thought about this, then gestured at her with the coffee. “No.”
“Jones, do I really need to tell you that the alternative is me arresting you now and you never seeing him again?” She turned to glare at him. “My men surround this area; you have no chance of escape, unless you accept my offer.”
“And do you think for one second that I’m going to back down when you have my family prisoner like this?” He slammed the coffee down so that it spilled over his hand and scalded him. “I’m not going to stop until I have brought you down and the people I love are safe from you, once and for all?”
“What about your sister? What if I arrested her as well? Or your niece and nephew.” She gripped his arm and dragged him from his set. “I’m tired of games, Jones. You’re under arrest.”
He let her drag him from the chair and stumbled against her heavily, knocking her off her balance despite her strength. That moment was all he needed to drag his gun out and strike out at her with it, too close to risk firing, and bring it down on her temple and then her forehead. A kick to the back of her knees brought her down and he rammed her face-first into the counter he’d been sitting at.
His victory was short-lived, though, as men and women appeared at the ends of the corridors and advanced on him, guns drawn. He grabbed the woman’s gun from her as she struggled to get up, kicked her down again and leapt over the counter into Burger King to slam his hand against the fire alarm. The staff who had hidden in the back room screamed and did nothing to stop him as he hurtled past them into the delivery area at the back and into the enclosed yard. With minutes to go before the agents got there, he unlocked the gate at the back and pushed it wide open, then dove behind the bins and pressed his back against the wall, clutching the guns in his hands and trying to calm his hammering heart and rapid breathing.
When the agents came running through the yard they examined the gates and the van that had been unloading there, but Ianto stayed hidden in his corner. They posted a guard in the yard in case he came back and left him trapped there for hours, shivering in his damp jumper and jeans that had soaked up water from the rank puddle he’d sat in. His breath formed clouds in front of him, however lightly he tried to breathe, and he closed his eyes rather than look at the signs he was giving off. It was an interminable age before his guard muttered an agreement and an assent and finally left him behind, locking the gate and leaving him alone in the yard. Even with the guard gone, and the workers starting to bring bin bags out to the yard again, he waited until the moon had risen over the yard before he crept from his hiding place and slunk into the car park.
He used the lock pick to open a car that was hidden from the CCTV under a tree and cranked up the heating, waiting to get his shaking under control before he attempted to move. The motorway was nearly empty when he drove up to the next roundabout and turned around to come back, and he entertained the idea that he could have crossed it on foot before sense crept back in. He knew he should move as soon as he could and get as far away as possible, but the crushing disappointment of finding his room empty of Jack and the surveillance kit still recording the bug he’d planted in his clothes, all the could do was turn it off, dump his clothes on the floor and fall into bed .
X~X~X~X
Loud voices in the corridor woke him the next morning, and he dragged himself into the bathroom to run a bath and change his appearance with the utmost reluctance. Whilst the tiny bath filled with hot water he ran the basin full and, using a whole pack of disposable razors and a pair of scissors, shaved off the beard, revealing too-pale skin with every swipe of the dull razors. He stared into his own eyes and didn’t recognise himself - he was gaunt and haggard, red-rimmed eyes sunk in a thin face that was now lined with worry. It was no wonder that people had been so willing to believe that he wasn’t the fresh-faced outlaw that the newspapers had painted him as.
The water sloshed above the outflow, so he set aside his contemplation and turned the taps off. Sitting on the side of the bath he pulled the plug to let some of the water out, and before long he was sliding into the shallow water, tucking his knees up to his chest so that he fitted in the small space. The hot water washed away layers of grime, and he ran the bath again twice before he felt really clean and he could run his fingers through his hair without grimacing.
Once he pulled himself out of the bath he leaned against the counter and stared at himself a while longer, then pulled a pair of scissors from his wash bag and cut his hair. It dropped around him in damp, curling, clumps, falling to the counter and littering across it, across his arms and his chest. When he’d finished restyling his hair it was short and blond-tipped, spiked with gel into soft peaks, away from his usual quiff. “Oh god,” he muttered, patting it to make sure it had set, “I’m a meringue.”
He tidied everything up in the bathroom, sweeping his hair clippings into a bundle of toilet roll and dropping them in the bin, then packed up his satchel with the things he needed, put the things he wanted in the rucksack and took them both out to the car park, checking out on his way out. A sportscar two rows away from the motel had a suit bag hanging in the passenger window, and when he opened the boot to put his rucksack in there he found a set of golf clubs, a weekend bag and a work bag. He grinned and slammed the boot shut, then slid into the driver’s seat, adjusted the mirror, and took off for Cambridge.
X~X~X~X
The university library was conveniently full of hidden corners and a huge archive of the Cambridge local paper. He left his rucksack in the empty house he’d taken up residence in so that he could arrive each day with the morning rush and sit himself down in a deep armchair with a stack of newspapers and read through them, studying even the tiniest articles for anything that hinted at a location for the base. It was soothing, in a way, drifting backwards through time in the life of a city he’d only rarely visited whilst surrounded by the quiet, studious hum and the rustle of paper.
Students came past him occasionally, stepping over his legs and giving him absent smiles. Most of them seemed to be using the aisle as a shortcut between the stairs and the DVD section in the next set of shelves, but some were looking for the newspapers and city yearbooks around him, their fingers trailing along the shelves or tapping against the spines. They paid him no heed and he did the same, just shifting out of the way when they needed him to and hiding behind his paper.
As a result, it came as a shock when someone cleared their throat above him. He lowered the paper and looked up at the girl; she had brown hair that zig-zagged around her face and a pile of books tucked under one arm, and her gentle eyes studied him for longer than his nerves were comfortable with. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but are you Ianto Jones?”
He sighed heavily and fished the tin out of his satchel, holding it out to her and rattling it. “Pound in the pot, please.”
She took it from him and read it. “Clever. Very clever. Do people usually fall for it?” She put a pound in the tin anyway, then looked both ways down the alley and leaned closer to him. “You can trust me. I know you didn’t kill him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because it was Department X.”
Ianto stared up at her, torn between hope and abject amusement. “Oh brilliant, a conspiracy theorist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She folded her arms and glared down at him. “There’s so much going on that they don’t tell us about, like the terrorist attacks on Downing Street and Canary Wharf – they weren’t terrorist attacks.”
He closed his paper, set it back on the pile with the others and folded his hands behind his head. “And what are you going to do if I am a notorious serial killer on the run from justice? Buy me coffee?”
“Not here, the coffee’s terrible here.” She offered him her phone with a photo showing on the screen. “I’m Jane, and you should know that they’re waiting outside for you.”
“Shit.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again her hand was still there, so he shook it briefly. “I need to get out of here. And I still haven’t found what I needed.”
“Conspiracy theorist, remember?” She passed him the tin back , tucked her hands into the pocket of her hoody and tilted her head. “Do you trust me?”
“Not in the slightest. For all I know you tipped them off and then came to delay me.” He tidied up the papers and gathered his things together again. “No offence, but there are people trying to kill me.”
“None taken. I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.” She took the seat he’d just vacated and dug her computer out of her bag. “But you do need every ally you can get.”
He paused halfway down the aisle and turned back to look at her. “Why would you help me?”
“Because I want to know what happened to Steven and Alice Carter.” She closed her laptop again and rested her hands on top of it. “Ianto Jones would not have killed Brian Green out of revenge. Someone somewhere is lying, and I want to know who. You tell me what’s really going on, and I’ll help you find your answers.”
“Okay.” He held his hand out for hers again. “Ianto Jones, Torchwood agent.”
“Jane Simpson, student.” She shook his hand and used it to tug him behind her. “We’ll use the side entrance and go out through the woods and around the sports field, then cross over through St. John’s to get to the river.”
“Local guide, I like it.” He followed her through the shelves to the back staircase. “Here, let me carry your books for you.”
She passed them over to him, brushing her hair out of her face when she had her hands free again. “I do like a gentleman.” She chatted easily as they went down the stairs, calling him Andrew and telling him about her terrible last lecture and how lucky he was not to have her lecturer any more. He didn’t have chance to do more than grunt agreement until they reached the door, where curtains of rain fell between them and the trees that surrounded this side of the building. Next to him, Jane fumbled in her bag and brought out a yellow umbrella. He raised an eyebrow at her as she put it up and she shrugged, looping her arm through his and tugging him under its shelter until they were dry and their faces were hidden. “I like it,” she told him. “It makes even the worst weather that bit brighter.”
“And no one will ever lose you in a crowd.” The rain hammered on the canvas, drowning out all opportunity for conversation, and they dashed through the puddles that formed on the gravel paths into the shade of the trees. Here the rain was more distant, but heavier drops falling from the leaves still required the use of the umbrella. Jane was tucked close against his side, a warm and solid weight that stumbled against him occasionally to avoid branches or puddles, and they laughed together. He realised now how much he’d missed the companionship of living and working with someone – it wasn’t just Jack, although he ached with how much he missed him, but it was the ease of being able to trust someone, being able to talk about anything and nothing, just not being alone.
She caught his silence and squeezed his arm. “You’ve gone all quiet.”
“Just thinking.” He looked up at the world, what he could see of it beyond the bright yellow, and sighed. “I miss my boyfriend.”
“Oh…” They reached the edge of the wood and began skirting the playing fields. “Is he nice?”
“Not always. He’s an arrogant, egotistical, self-centred prick sometimes.” He swallowed hard and smiled at her. “But mostly he’s nice, yeah. He’s insecure, a bit, and so lonely.”
“Even with you?”
“I make it easier,” he said. “Knowing that I’m there, and that I don’t demand more of him than he can give, I don’t expect him to have all the answers, and I can tell when he needs his space and when he just needs to curl up on the sofa and be held… I worry about him. I hope he’s alright.”
“I bet you can’t wait to be back with him.” Jane dropped her gaze to her feet again, and brought his attention to a gnarled root that was about to trip him. “My boyfriend dumped me just before Christmas,” she blurted. “He said that he realised that he didn’t want me to come home with him, and that that meant that we weren’t in for the long haul, so he didn’t want to drag it out for either of us.”
“Bastard.”
“That’s what I said!” She sighed. “He didn’t get it, though. Men.”
“They’re useless,” he agreed. She looked sideways at him and they laughed. “I’m glad you found me. I missed having someone to talk to.”
“You must have been so alone the last few months.” She lifted the umbrella again and made a show of studying the woods. “It’s this way.”
The rain didn’t let up for the rest of the walk, and it was quite a long way back to Jane’s house. They passed the grand frontage of St John’s College, and Ianto stopped to admire it for a moment before she ushered him on through the puddles. By the time they got indoors they were soaked to the skin, and Ianto dripped miserably onto the floor whilst she went to get towels.
“They should be warm,” she told him as she came back downstairs. “Take your boots off and leave them by the door. Have you got a change of clothes?”
“No, I’ve just got this bag.” He peered into his satchel and grimaced. “Even my spare socks are soaked.”
“Bugger. I’ll go and get my dressing gown – it’s the only thing that might be big enough to fit you.” She ran back upstairs, towelling her hair dry with one hand and calling down to him as she went, “There’s only three of us here, and we’re all girls, otherwise we’d have something for you to use. If my useless ex hadn’t taken everything with him…”
“It’s okay. Clothes will dry. I’ll just have to sit around naked in your living room.” A moment later, something soft and yellow dropped on him from the top of the stairs, and he fought down a panic whilst he got it off. It turned out to be a tie-dyed yellow dressing gown, just big enough to go around him. He glanced up the stairs and shut himself in the windowless kitchen to strip out of his clothes, leaving him standing in his boxers, which clung to him uncomfortably, and Jane’s dressing gown.
“You look ridiculous,” she told him when she got back downstairs, dressed in dry clothes and wrapped in a dressing gown that may have matched the one he was wearing once, before it lost a fight with something blue. Water dripped from her hair, which she’d pinned up on the top of her head, and it flicked onto him when she pushed him out of the way of the counter. “Do you want a drink? We’ve got tea and coffee.”
“Is it instant?”
“Of course.”
“Tea then, please.” He stepped back out of her way and tucked his hands into the pockets of the dressing gown, finding a post-it note and a pen. “White, all the sugars.”
“All the sugars?” She chuckled to herself and waved a spoon at the room. “I would have tidied, but I wasn’t expecting you. Do excuse the mess.”
“It’s fine.” He accepted a biscuit when she offered it and propped himself against the counter. “So… housemates in?”
“Not until later,” she assured him. “Mindy’s working until about 8, and Cathy’s… doing whatever she does. They’re never home. Neither am I, usually. I thought I’d make a special case.”
“I’m flattered.” The kitchen had suggested that they weren’t in it a lot. Empty mugs were stacked on the drainer instead of put away and the bin was full of take-away and instant meal boxes, which accounted for the lack of plates on the drainer. “Nice place.”
“It does us.” She finished the teas and handed one to him. “Right, let’s go to my room. Before you say anything, I’ve got all my files up there, and there might be something you can use.”
He followed her up the stairs, then up another flight of stairs to an attic room not unlike the ones at the Brecon farm. A window under the eaves on each side provided the light, and everything fitted into the slope of the roof, including the pictures that were stuck to it at top and bottom. He leaned back to look at them and found himself looking at his own image. “Jane… this is starting to feel a bit stalker-ish.”
“It’s all in the public domain. Well, apart from that,” she admitted, indicating the photo he was looking at. “You have no idea how hard it is to get hold of photos of you.”
“No, I know exactly how hard it is to get hold of photos of me.” He squinted at it and tried to work out when it was taken. “There’s a computer virus that erases any photos of me or the team on any computer connected to the internet. It’s why they had to use a sketch for the papers, and why it’s not a perfect likeness. How did you get this one?”
“One of my friends got it from someone in Cardiff. You’ve got quite a fan-club, but I suspect it’s your computer virus that makes it hard to maintain.” She sighed and flopped back in the middle of the double bed. “Even after it was all over the papers, we were still having to use secure servers and Royal Mail to communicate with each other. We have a magazine and everything.”
“I’m impressed.” He trailed along the wall, looking at the photos and newspaper clippings. “You’re really good.”
“I am at Cambridge,” she scoffed. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Right, yes.” He looked over his shoulder at her and frowned at the notepad she had open. “Are you studying journalism by any chance?” When she nodded, he rolled his eyes and came to sit on the end of the bed with his legs crossed. “I should have known. Right, so…It goes back to the 456. The children stopped because aliens were using them to deliver a message. Someone didn’t want Torchwood getting involved with it, so they blew up our base and tried to kill us.” He paused for her to comment, but she only waved him on. “We survived, we found out what they were doing, about the fact that they were hosting the aliens at Thames House. We went there, rocks fell, everyone died.”
This time she did comment. “Everyone but you and Captain Jack Harkness… why did you survive?”
“He can’t die, I picked up an immunity to the virus somewhere.” He shrugged one shoulder and leaned back on his hands, careful not to fall off the bed. “Torchwood, something like that. Anyway, I woke up in hospital about a month later, so I only know what I’ve been told from there on.”
“Go on…”
“They kidnapped Jack’s… sister.” Jane raised her eyebrow, which he ignored. “They went after my sister as well, but only to see if they were harbouring me. They kidnapped Jack’s sister and her son and took them to a secure facility near London, to use as a bargaining tool against him.”
“Alice and Steven Carter,” she guessed.
He nodded. “Alice and Steven. I knew that they existed, but I’d never met them. We knew that they were in custody, but we didn’t know where. We still don’t know where it was. What we do know is that… they destroyed the aliens. They projected a signal back to them, which fried their systems or their brains or something, I don’t know what. UNIT shot their ship out of the sky as it fell out of orbit.”
Jane scribbled that down and looked up at him. “And neither of them has been seen since?”
“Alice showed up on our doorstep a month before Christmas. Steven… they told us that Steven had been killed – they used him to create the signal to kill the 456, and it killed him.” He took a deep breath and amended, “Or so they told us.”
She paused with her pen hovering over the paper. “You think he’s alive?”
“So I’ve been told,” he confirmed. “We were contacted by… an ally, you don’t need to know more than that,” he told her, despite her scowl. “If this works, you’ll know a whole lot more. Anyway, she contacted us and told us that Steven was alive and still being held prisoner. We did as much research as we could, but apparently we were getting too close or doing something someone didn’t want us to do, because we were warned that a warrant had been issued for our arrest and they were coming for us.”
That got added to the notes as well, and she had to start a fresh page. “Do you believe that?”
“People keep trying to kill me.” He shrugged again. “I took it as confirmation. And Brian Green confirmed it.”
“So you did go and see him?”
“Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He told me everything, worryingly easily. I threatened him a bit, sure, but not enough to get what I did out of him. I think he thought that he was keeping me distracted whilst reinforcements came.”
“And did you kill him?”
“No,” he told her firmly. “I left him alive and well, and listened in to a conversation he had with someone from... Department X. I have a recording of that conversation to prove it.”
“So… they killed him to shut him up?” She frowned at him. “That doesn’t make sense if he’d already told you what he knew.”
He spread his hands. “Maybe it was a punishment, maybe they were shutting the door after the horse had bolted, or maybe he lied about how much he told me. I don’t know. All I know is that the next day I was plastered over the papers, having apparently murdered him in his home and left him for his wife to find. Which is very odd, because I know that the next people in the house after me were the forces of darkness.”
“Right.” She capped her pen and reached for her computer. “I’ll order food, you look through the stuff on the wall and see if you can get anything useful. Then we’ll get down to it and see what we can find.”
It was past midnight before they were finished. Between the empty curry trays they had arranged neat stacks of notes spread around an OS map of the region and a bright pink post-it note with an arrow pointing to the suspected location. Ianto settled back and smiled with satisfaction. “You are something special,” he told Jane. “I’d work with you any day.”
He turned to look at her and found her closer than he’d expected, her face flushed with pleasure and draped in soft shadows. “It was brilliant working with you.” She flicked her gaze down to his lips for a moment, then back up to his eyes. “Ianto…”
“Jane.” He swallowed again and brought his thumb to her lips. “I can’t help feeling that this is a mistake.”
“Is that a no?” Her lips moved against his thumb, and her tongue flicked out against it. “Because if it is…”
“It’s not a no.” He slid his hand down to cup her cheek and tilt her face up into the light. “What if I offer you a job after this?”
“Are you likely to?”
“Very.” He pulled his hand back and ran it through his hair instead. “I’m sorry. I want to, but… Jack.”
“I understand.” She got to her feet and went to the window, kneeling next to it to close the blinds. “Sex is no fun with regrets.”
“You sound so like him.” He still hadn’t moved. When she looked back at him he forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’m not sure I’d regret it.”
She returned and bent over him. Her hair fell around his face as her lips touched his gently, just for a moment, and surrounded him even after she pulled back. “It’s just sex. And it’s not cheating if you’re thinking of him the whole time.”
He rested his hands on her waist to steady her when she kissed him again. This time it was firmer and he parted his lips to let her deepen it. She was soft and curvy under his hands, tasted of chocolate and mint and woman, and when she led him back to the bed and pulled off her T shirt he found that he was right. He didn’t regret it at all .
X~X~X~X
Jane's alarm screamed at them from somewhere on her desk, and she buried her head under her pillow rather than deal with it. Taking sympathy on her, Ianto dragged himself out of bed and found it, hidden under a newspaper, and turned it off. He picked up his discarded clothes and started redressing whilst she unburied herself to watch.
“Are you going to go after them?” she asked at last, wrapping her arms around her knees over the duvet. “Today?”
“I have to.” He paused in pulling his hoody on to look at her. “Every day I wait they get closer to me, and now to you. I shouldn't have come here.”
She growled and climbed across the bed to the wardrobe. “But you did, and now you know where you're going. What do you need me to do?”
“You need to keep your head down for a while.” He looked around for his boots and remembered that they were downstairs, then started packing things back into his satchel instead. “I'll give you the address of someone who'll help you.”
“I can't just hide whilst you're...” She waved a hand at him and propped the other on her hip. “There has to be something I can do, surely? Now you have the information, can't we take it to UNIT, or... anyone?”
He looked back at her and forced a smile. “My list of allies grows thin. I don't know who I can trust.” He sighed and grabbed a Post-It note from the desk, scribbling the address down on it. “You need to go to Sarah Jane Smith – she lives in North London, and she has access to the Subwave network. If anyone can help us, they'll be on that network. I can't go and put her in danger like that, but you'll be safe.”
She took the note from him and twisted it between her fingers. “I should come with you...” Folding the note, she turned away and picked out a pair of walking boots. “London, right. I'll borrow Dai's car – he won't mind. Less traceable than train or bus, I guess.”
“I'll give you some cash, and... and the surveillance kit,” he decided. “Everything I know is saved in there, all the evidence. You'll need it.”
“I didn't expect to bring down the government until after I graduated.” She looked up at the clock and frowned. “Do you think my lecturer will mind me missing one for this?”
“Extra credit, probably. You could even do an assignment on it.” Ianto set aside everything he couldn't take with him, keeping the lockpick and his multi-tool, a handful of cash and his guns, and passed her the surveillance kit. “Look after that.”
They walked into town together and parted ways outside her friend's house when she stopped in to borrow his car. Ianto hurried on to a book shop where he bought a handful of OS maps, including the right one, and then to the bus station. It took him three buses and two hours to get out to a village near the location of the base and, after stopping to pick at a sandwich in the pub, he set off walking to get there before nightfall.
It was heavy going by a round-about route along the edge of frozen fields. His boots, battered by the weeks of wear, protected his ankles on the uneven surface, but the branches of the hedges that lined his path tugged at his clothes and scratched at his face if he let his attention wander. The sun dipped behind the hedge, hiding the path in shadow and making it more perilous even as it gave him extra cover, and the temperature dropped with it and he started shivering, even in the thick jumper and at his quick pace. He wrapped his arms around his chest and tucked his face down into his damp scarf.
The cry of a fox rang across the fields, stabbing across his taut nerves like a shard of the ice underfoot. He was left shaken in the silence afterwards, disconcerted, distressed and completely alone. Each step was forced, one foot in front of the other, trudging onwards against the clock, knowing that he wouldn’t survive a night out here.
He rounded a small thicket of evergreen trees and came to a tall fence surrounding a group of buildings. There was still just enough light in the sky for him to make out the shapes of the buildings and the spaces between them, the occasional glint of light on glass at the windows, but the whole area was still and silent. Keeping his back to the forest, he edged to a post along the fence and pressed the lockpick against it. It flashed blue twice to indicate that the alarms had been deactivated, and he swapped it for his multi-tool. Down the line of the post, from his eye height downwards, he severed the link between the fence and the post, creating a neat opening. As soon as he reached the bottom he ducked through and used pieces of wire cut from the fence to hold the gap closed enough to pass inspection in the darkness.
Concrete blocks loomed out of the darkness at him like ghostly ships in the fog. Everything he saw suggested that the site was as disused as it purported to be, apart from the maintenance of the fence and the UPVC around some of the high windows. He opened the door to one of the buildings into a room of dust and neglect and sighed to himself. There was a large hangar in the middle of the complex, but getting to it would leave him exposed if there were anyone around.
Something crunched behind him, and he spun around to face it, pressing his back against the wall of the building and sliding into the doorway. The light of a torch panned across him, and he had barely a second to react before he felt a blossoming agony, heard the retort of a gun and the guard’s shouts, and had to sink to the ground under waves of dizzy nausea. Blood stained his hands, bright red in the torchlight, and when he looked up the guard was towering over him .
“Jones is here,” the man reported with amused frustration. “Don’t know how he got in, but he’s not going anywhere. I’ll bring him round to the med suite; with any luck, blood loss’ll get him in the night.”
Ianto closed his eyes and rested his head against the doorframe, wracked with shivers and in agony from his wound. Darkness pressed on him, and when the guard dragged him to his feet and pushed him forwards he felt himself stumble and then nothing.
Next chapter
Chapter Title: Chapter 4
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.
From the bridge over the motorway, Ianto could see the marked police car at the entrance to the car park, and one of the guards in the car park itself. A set of stolen keys jingled in his gloved hand, and his step bounced as he wound his way through the crowd to the Travelodge. The clerk behind the counter looked up at him reluctantly, and stabbed at the keyboard with one finger. “Do you have a reservation... sir?”
“No, I don’t. Random stop,” he explained with a false smile. “Do you have any vacancies?”
“We won’t fill up till later,” he explained in the same bored drawl. “Don’t normally get people checking in before dark. It’ll have to be a double room.”
“Yep, that’s fine. Plenty of space.” He dug out his wallet and slid the card he’d selected onto the desk. It was one that Jack would be able to find if this all went wrong, but which he hoped wouldn’t set off any alarms. “I probably won’t stay all night. Is there an early checkout procedure?"”
The clerk had a room key out for him, and he pointed with it at the self-service machines against the wall. “Just swipe it, pay any balance left on the room and drop it in the slot.” He swiped it through the machine, tapped Ianto’s false details in with two fingers and without asking for ID, and then handed it over. “Have a nice stay.”
He smiled back and went back to the toilets to collect his rucksack, which he’d left locked in a cubicle. With that back on his back he slipped past the receptionist, who had turned his attention back to his phone, and padded down the corridor to his room. It was bare and simple - a bed, a desk with a TV and drink facilities and an en-suite bathroom. He dropped the bag onto the bed and fell forwards onto it, curling his fingers into the duvet and clinging to it until the urge to giggle had subsided.
When he persuaded himself to move again, he pulled himself from the bed and started unpacking his rucksack. He got everything spread out on the bed and selected the things he needed and needed to keep, then packed what he wouldn’t need into the rucksack again and tucked it under the desk. Out on the bed he now had the lockpick device, which used a magnetic field to recreate the motion of the key and also had an override for swipe-card locks; his guns and multitool; the surveillance kit with all the information he’d gathered on notes inside it; one change of clothes; a razor and shaving gel; the tablet computers and two of the mobile phones; all the money he had left; his wash bag; the decoy tin and a bottle of vodka. He took his jumper to the bathroom and tossed it in the bath, then poured half of the bottle of vodka over it so that it would smell of drink, and turned to the mirror to apply hair gel to mess his previously neat beard and hair. Once that was done he poured the rest of the bottle over his head and went to lie on the bed and watch TV whilst it dried.
He got bored with waiting and the nerves starting making an appearance again, so he grabbed the nearly-dry jumper from the bath, stuffed the lock pick, a phone and as much money as he could carry in his pockets and a gun down the pack of his pants, checked the knife in his boot and headed out the door in search of trouble. The hotel was as empty as the clerk had said, and he was able to slip out of a fire exit at the back and skirt around it, keeping to the walls until he got back into the main building. It was busy here again, and people were staring at him, so he went to Burger King and bought himself a meal with a large coffee, and sat at the counter, facing out.
The woman came to join him after a few minutes, parting the crowds without thought as she advanced on him. People stared at her and then at him, recognising him for who he was at last, and they scattered with muted panic. He smirked at them and stuffed the napkin in on top of the chips, grimacing at the greasy feel on his fingers. “I got your message,” he told her, finding his voice conveniently rough with disuse. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced, though.”
“You don’t need to know who I am.” She nodded at a family hurrying towards the exit. “Do you ever get frustrated by their tiny minds?”
“Nope. My life is all about letting them keep their minds small and safe.” He pulled a face at a sip of the bitter coffee and set it aside again. “Or it was, until someone blew it up.”
“If you leave now, we’ll let you,” she told him. “You can find Harkness, leave the country, and as long as you don’t come back and don’t talk to anyone, we won’t bother you.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair.” He attempted the coffee again. “Is he still evading you, then?”
“Harkness’s whereabouts are unknown,” she admitted. “And they can remain that way, if you take my offer.”
He thought about this, then gestured at her with the coffee. “No.”
“Jones, do I really need to tell you that the alternative is me arresting you now and you never seeing him again?” She turned to glare at him. “My men surround this area; you have no chance of escape, unless you accept my offer.”
“And do you think for one second that I’m going to back down when you have my family prisoner like this?” He slammed the coffee down so that it spilled over his hand and scalded him. “I’m not going to stop until I have brought you down and the people I love are safe from you, once and for all?”
“What about your sister? What if I arrested her as well? Or your niece and nephew.” She gripped his arm and dragged him from his set. “I’m tired of games, Jones. You’re under arrest.”
He let her drag him from the chair and stumbled against her heavily, knocking her off her balance despite her strength. That moment was all he needed to drag his gun out and strike out at her with it, too close to risk firing, and bring it down on her temple and then her forehead. A kick to the back of her knees brought her down and he rammed her face-first into the counter he’d been sitting at.
His victory was short-lived, though, as men and women appeared at the ends of the corridors and advanced on him, guns drawn. He grabbed the woman’s gun from her as she struggled to get up, kicked her down again and leapt over the counter into Burger King to slam his hand against the fire alarm. The staff who had hidden in the back room screamed and did nothing to stop him as he hurtled past them into the delivery area at the back and into the enclosed yard. With minutes to go before the agents got there, he unlocked the gate at the back and pushed it wide open, then dove behind the bins and pressed his back against the wall, clutching the guns in his hands and trying to calm his hammering heart and rapid breathing.
When the agents came running through the yard they examined the gates and the van that had been unloading there, but Ianto stayed hidden in his corner. They posted a guard in the yard in case he came back and left him trapped there for hours, shivering in his damp jumper and jeans that had soaked up water from the rank puddle he’d sat in. His breath formed clouds in front of him, however lightly he tried to breathe, and he closed his eyes rather than look at the signs he was giving off. It was an interminable age before his guard muttered an agreement and an assent and finally left him behind, locking the gate and leaving him alone in the yard. Even with the guard gone, and the workers starting to bring bin bags out to the yard again, he waited until the moon had risen over the yard before he crept from his hiding place and slunk into the car park.
He used the lock pick to open a car that was hidden from the CCTV under a tree and cranked up the heating, waiting to get his shaking under control before he attempted to move. The motorway was nearly empty when he drove up to the next roundabout and turned around to come back, and he entertained the idea that he could have crossed it on foot before sense crept back in. He knew he should move as soon as he could and get as far away as possible, but the crushing disappointment of finding his room empty of Jack and the surveillance kit still recording the bug he’d planted in his clothes, all the could do was turn it off, dump his clothes on the floor and fall into bed .
X~X~X~X
Loud voices in the corridor woke him the next morning, and he dragged himself into the bathroom to run a bath and change his appearance with the utmost reluctance. Whilst the tiny bath filled with hot water he ran the basin full and, using a whole pack of disposable razors and a pair of scissors, shaved off the beard, revealing too-pale skin with every swipe of the dull razors. He stared into his own eyes and didn’t recognise himself - he was gaunt and haggard, red-rimmed eyes sunk in a thin face that was now lined with worry. It was no wonder that people had been so willing to believe that he wasn’t the fresh-faced outlaw that the newspapers had painted him as.
The water sloshed above the outflow, so he set aside his contemplation and turned the taps off. Sitting on the side of the bath he pulled the plug to let some of the water out, and before long he was sliding into the shallow water, tucking his knees up to his chest so that he fitted in the small space. The hot water washed away layers of grime, and he ran the bath again twice before he felt really clean and he could run his fingers through his hair without grimacing.
Once he pulled himself out of the bath he leaned against the counter and stared at himself a while longer, then pulled a pair of scissors from his wash bag and cut his hair. It dropped around him in damp, curling, clumps, falling to the counter and littering across it, across his arms and his chest. When he’d finished restyling his hair it was short and blond-tipped, spiked with gel into soft peaks, away from his usual quiff. “Oh god,” he muttered, patting it to make sure it had set, “I’m a meringue.”
He tidied everything up in the bathroom, sweeping his hair clippings into a bundle of toilet roll and dropping them in the bin, then packed up his satchel with the things he needed, put the things he wanted in the rucksack and took them both out to the car park, checking out on his way out. A sportscar two rows away from the motel had a suit bag hanging in the passenger window, and when he opened the boot to put his rucksack in there he found a set of golf clubs, a weekend bag and a work bag. He grinned and slammed the boot shut, then slid into the driver’s seat, adjusted the mirror, and took off for Cambridge.
X~X~X~X
The university library was conveniently full of hidden corners and a huge archive of the Cambridge local paper. He left his rucksack in the empty house he’d taken up residence in so that he could arrive each day with the morning rush and sit himself down in a deep armchair with a stack of newspapers and read through them, studying even the tiniest articles for anything that hinted at a location for the base. It was soothing, in a way, drifting backwards through time in the life of a city he’d only rarely visited whilst surrounded by the quiet, studious hum and the rustle of paper.
Students came past him occasionally, stepping over his legs and giving him absent smiles. Most of them seemed to be using the aisle as a shortcut between the stairs and the DVD section in the next set of shelves, but some were looking for the newspapers and city yearbooks around him, their fingers trailing along the shelves or tapping against the spines. They paid him no heed and he did the same, just shifting out of the way when they needed him to and hiding behind his paper.
As a result, it came as a shock when someone cleared their throat above him. He lowered the paper and looked up at the girl; she had brown hair that zig-zagged around her face and a pile of books tucked under one arm, and her gentle eyes studied him for longer than his nerves were comfortable with. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but are you Ianto Jones?”
He sighed heavily and fished the tin out of his satchel, holding it out to her and rattling it. “Pound in the pot, please.”
She took it from him and read it. “Clever. Very clever. Do people usually fall for it?” She put a pound in the tin anyway, then looked both ways down the alley and leaned closer to him. “You can trust me. I know you didn’t kill him.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because it was Department X.”
Ianto stared up at her, torn between hope and abject amusement. “Oh brilliant, a conspiracy theorist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She folded her arms and glared down at him. “There’s so much going on that they don’t tell us about, like the terrorist attacks on Downing Street and Canary Wharf – they weren’t terrorist attacks.”
He closed his paper, set it back on the pile with the others and folded his hands behind his head. “And what are you going to do if I am a notorious serial killer on the run from justice? Buy me coffee?”
“Not here, the coffee’s terrible here.” She offered him her phone with a photo showing on the screen. “I’m Jane, and you should know that they’re waiting outside for you.”
“Shit.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again her hand was still there, so he shook it briefly. “I need to get out of here. And I still haven’t found what I needed.”
“Conspiracy theorist, remember?” She passed him the tin back , tucked her hands into the pocket of her hoody and tilted her head. “Do you trust me?”
“Not in the slightest. For all I know you tipped them off and then came to delay me.” He tidied up the papers and gathered his things together again. “No offence, but there are people trying to kill me.”
“None taken. I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.” She took the seat he’d just vacated and dug her computer out of her bag. “But you do need every ally you can get.”
He paused halfway down the aisle and turned back to look at her. “Why would you help me?”
“Because I want to know what happened to Steven and Alice Carter.” She closed her laptop again and rested her hands on top of it. “Ianto Jones would not have killed Brian Green out of revenge. Someone somewhere is lying, and I want to know who. You tell me what’s really going on, and I’ll help you find your answers.”
“Okay.” He held his hand out for hers again. “Ianto Jones, Torchwood agent.”
“Jane Simpson, student.” She shook his hand and used it to tug him behind her. “We’ll use the side entrance and go out through the woods and around the sports field, then cross over through St. John’s to get to the river.”
“Local guide, I like it.” He followed her through the shelves to the back staircase. “Here, let me carry your books for you.”
She passed them over to him, brushing her hair out of her face when she had her hands free again. “I do like a gentleman.” She chatted easily as they went down the stairs, calling him Andrew and telling him about her terrible last lecture and how lucky he was not to have her lecturer any more. He didn’t have chance to do more than grunt agreement until they reached the door, where curtains of rain fell between them and the trees that surrounded this side of the building. Next to him, Jane fumbled in her bag and brought out a yellow umbrella. He raised an eyebrow at her as she put it up and she shrugged, looping her arm through his and tugging him under its shelter until they were dry and their faces were hidden. “I like it,” she told him. “It makes even the worst weather that bit brighter.”
“And no one will ever lose you in a crowd.” The rain hammered on the canvas, drowning out all opportunity for conversation, and they dashed through the puddles that formed on the gravel paths into the shade of the trees. Here the rain was more distant, but heavier drops falling from the leaves still required the use of the umbrella. Jane was tucked close against his side, a warm and solid weight that stumbled against him occasionally to avoid branches or puddles, and they laughed together. He realised now how much he’d missed the companionship of living and working with someone – it wasn’t just Jack, although he ached with how much he missed him, but it was the ease of being able to trust someone, being able to talk about anything and nothing, just not being alone.
She caught his silence and squeezed his arm. “You’ve gone all quiet.”
“Just thinking.” He looked up at the world, what he could see of it beyond the bright yellow, and sighed. “I miss my boyfriend.”
“Oh…” They reached the edge of the wood and began skirting the playing fields. “Is he nice?”
“Not always. He’s an arrogant, egotistical, self-centred prick sometimes.” He swallowed hard and smiled at her. “But mostly he’s nice, yeah. He’s insecure, a bit, and so lonely.”
“Even with you?”
“I make it easier,” he said. “Knowing that I’m there, and that I don’t demand more of him than he can give, I don’t expect him to have all the answers, and I can tell when he needs his space and when he just needs to curl up on the sofa and be held… I worry about him. I hope he’s alright.”
“I bet you can’t wait to be back with him.” Jane dropped her gaze to her feet again, and brought his attention to a gnarled root that was about to trip him. “My boyfriend dumped me just before Christmas,” she blurted. “He said that he realised that he didn’t want me to come home with him, and that that meant that we weren’t in for the long haul, so he didn’t want to drag it out for either of us.”
“Bastard.”
“That’s what I said!” She sighed. “He didn’t get it, though. Men.”
“They’re useless,” he agreed. She looked sideways at him and they laughed. “I’m glad you found me. I missed having someone to talk to.”
“You must have been so alone the last few months.” She lifted the umbrella again and made a show of studying the woods. “It’s this way.”
The rain didn’t let up for the rest of the walk, and it was quite a long way back to Jane’s house. They passed the grand frontage of St John’s College, and Ianto stopped to admire it for a moment before she ushered him on through the puddles. By the time they got indoors they were soaked to the skin, and Ianto dripped miserably onto the floor whilst she went to get towels.
“They should be warm,” she told him as she came back downstairs. “Take your boots off and leave them by the door. Have you got a change of clothes?”
“No, I’ve just got this bag.” He peered into his satchel and grimaced. “Even my spare socks are soaked.”
“Bugger. I’ll go and get my dressing gown – it’s the only thing that might be big enough to fit you.” She ran back upstairs, towelling her hair dry with one hand and calling down to him as she went, “There’s only three of us here, and we’re all girls, otherwise we’d have something for you to use. If my useless ex hadn’t taken everything with him…”
“It’s okay. Clothes will dry. I’ll just have to sit around naked in your living room.” A moment later, something soft and yellow dropped on him from the top of the stairs, and he fought down a panic whilst he got it off. It turned out to be a tie-dyed yellow dressing gown, just big enough to go around him. He glanced up the stairs and shut himself in the windowless kitchen to strip out of his clothes, leaving him standing in his boxers, which clung to him uncomfortably, and Jane’s dressing gown.
“You look ridiculous,” she told him when she got back downstairs, dressed in dry clothes and wrapped in a dressing gown that may have matched the one he was wearing once, before it lost a fight with something blue. Water dripped from her hair, which she’d pinned up on the top of her head, and it flicked onto him when she pushed him out of the way of the counter. “Do you want a drink? We’ve got tea and coffee.”
“Is it instant?”
“Of course.”
“Tea then, please.” He stepped back out of her way and tucked his hands into the pockets of the dressing gown, finding a post-it note and a pen. “White, all the sugars.”
“All the sugars?” She chuckled to herself and waved a spoon at the room. “I would have tidied, but I wasn’t expecting you. Do excuse the mess.”
“It’s fine.” He accepted a biscuit when she offered it and propped himself against the counter. “So… housemates in?”
“Not until later,” she assured him. “Mindy’s working until about 8, and Cathy’s… doing whatever she does. They’re never home. Neither am I, usually. I thought I’d make a special case.”
“I’m flattered.” The kitchen had suggested that they weren’t in it a lot. Empty mugs were stacked on the drainer instead of put away and the bin was full of take-away and instant meal boxes, which accounted for the lack of plates on the drainer. “Nice place.”
“It does us.” She finished the teas and handed one to him. “Right, let’s go to my room. Before you say anything, I’ve got all my files up there, and there might be something you can use.”
He followed her up the stairs, then up another flight of stairs to an attic room not unlike the ones at the Brecon farm. A window under the eaves on each side provided the light, and everything fitted into the slope of the roof, including the pictures that were stuck to it at top and bottom. He leaned back to look at them and found himself looking at his own image. “Jane… this is starting to feel a bit stalker-ish.”
“It’s all in the public domain. Well, apart from that,” she admitted, indicating the photo he was looking at. “You have no idea how hard it is to get hold of photos of you.”
“No, I know exactly how hard it is to get hold of photos of me.” He squinted at it and tried to work out when it was taken. “There’s a computer virus that erases any photos of me or the team on any computer connected to the internet. It’s why they had to use a sketch for the papers, and why it’s not a perfect likeness. How did you get this one?”
“One of my friends got it from someone in Cardiff. You’ve got quite a fan-club, but I suspect it’s your computer virus that makes it hard to maintain.” She sighed and flopped back in the middle of the double bed. “Even after it was all over the papers, we were still having to use secure servers and Royal Mail to communicate with each other. We have a magazine and everything.”
“I’m impressed.” He trailed along the wall, looking at the photos and newspaper clippings. “You’re really good.”
“I am at Cambridge,” she scoffed. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Right, yes.” He looked over his shoulder at her and frowned at the notepad she had open. “Are you studying journalism by any chance?” When she nodded, he rolled his eyes and came to sit on the end of the bed with his legs crossed. “I should have known. Right, so…It goes back to the 456. The children stopped because aliens were using them to deliver a message. Someone didn’t want Torchwood getting involved with it, so they blew up our base and tried to kill us.” He paused for her to comment, but she only waved him on. “We survived, we found out what they were doing, about the fact that they were hosting the aliens at Thames House. We went there, rocks fell, everyone died.”
This time she did comment. “Everyone but you and Captain Jack Harkness… why did you survive?”
“He can’t die, I picked up an immunity to the virus somewhere.” He shrugged one shoulder and leaned back on his hands, careful not to fall off the bed. “Torchwood, something like that. Anyway, I woke up in hospital about a month later, so I only know what I’ve been told from there on.”
“Go on…”
“They kidnapped Jack’s… sister.” Jane raised her eyebrow, which he ignored. “They went after my sister as well, but only to see if they were harbouring me. They kidnapped Jack’s sister and her son and took them to a secure facility near London, to use as a bargaining tool against him.”
“Alice and Steven Carter,” she guessed.
He nodded. “Alice and Steven. I knew that they existed, but I’d never met them. We knew that they were in custody, but we didn’t know where. We still don’t know where it was. What we do know is that… they destroyed the aliens. They projected a signal back to them, which fried their systems or their brains or something, I don’t know what. UNIT shot their ship out of the sky as it fell out of orbit.”
Jane scribbled that down and looked up at him. “And neither of them has been seen since?”
“Alice showed up on our doorstep a month before Christmas. Steven… they told us that Steven had been killed – they used him to create the signal to kill the 456, and it killed him.” He took a deep breath and amended, “Or so they told us.”
She paused with her pen hovering over the paper. “You think he’s alive?”
“So I’ve been told,” he confirmed. “We were contacted by… an ally, you don’t need to know more than that,” he told her, despite her scowl. “If this works, you’ll know a whole lot more. Anyway, she contacted us and told us that Steven was alive and still being held prisoner. We did as much research as we could, but apparently we were getting too close or doing something someone didn’t want us to do, because we were warned that a warrant had been issued for our arrest and they were coming for us.”
That got added to the notes as well, and she had to start a fresh page. “Do you believe that?”
“People keep trying to kill me.” He shrugged again. “I took it as confirmation. And Brian Green confirmed it.”
“So you did go and see him?”
“Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He told me everything, worryingly easily. I threatened him a bit, sure, but not enough to get what I did out of him. I think he thought that he was keeping me distracted whilst reinforcements came.”
“And did you kill him?”
“No,” he told her firmly. “I left him alive and well, and listened in to a conversation he had with someone from... Department X. I have a recording of that conversation to prove it.”
“So… they killed him to shut him up?” She frowned at him. “That doesn’t make sense if he’d already told you what he knew.”
He spread his hands. “Maybe it was a punishment, maybe they were shutting the door after the horse had bolted, or maybe he lied about how much he told me. I don’t know. All I know is that the next day I was plastered over the papers, having apparently murdered him in his home and left him for his wife to find. Which is very odd, because I know that the next people in the house after me were the forces of darkness.”
“Right.” She capped her pen and reached for her computer. “I’ll order food, you look through the stuff on the wall and see if you can get anything useful. Then we’ll get down to it and see what we can find.”
It was past midnight before they were finished. Between the empty curry trays they had arranged neat stacks of notes spread around an OS map of the region and a bright pink post-it note with an arrow pointing to the suspected location. Ianto settled back and smiled with satisfaction. “You are something special,” he told Jane. “I’d work with you any day.”
He turned to look at her and found her closer than he’d expected, her face flushed with pleasure and draped in soft shadows. “It was brilliant working with you.” She flicked her gaze down to his lips for a moment, then back up to his eyes. “Ianto…”
“Jane.” He swallowed again and brought his thumb to her lips. “I can’t help feeling that this is a mistake.”
“Is that a no?” Her lips moved against his thumb, and her tongue flicked out against it. “Because if it is…”
“It’s not a no.” He slid his hand down to cup her cheek and tilt her face up into the light. “What if I offer you a job after this?”
“Are you likely to?”
“Very.” He pulled his hand back and ran it through his hair instead. “I’m sorry. I want to, but… Jack.”
“I understand.” She got to her feet and went to the window, kneeling next to it to close the blinds. “Sex is no fun with regrets.”
“You sound so like him.” He still hadn’t moved. When she looked back at him he forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’m not sure I’d regret it.”
She returned and bent over him. Her hair fell around his face as her lips touched his gently, just for a moment, and surrounded him even after she pulled back. “It’s just sex. And it’s not cheating if you’re thinking of him the whole time.”
He rested his hands on her waist to steady her when she kissed him again. This time it was firmer and he parted his lips to let her deepen it. She was soft and curvy under his hands, tasted of chocolate and mint and woman, and when she led him back to the bed and pulled off her T shirt he found that he was right. He didn’t regret it at all .
X~X~X~X
Jane's alarm screamed at them from somewhere on her desk, and she buried her head under her pillow rather than deal with it. Taking sympathy on her, Ianto dragged himself out of bed and found it, hidden under a newspaper, and turned it off. He picked up his discarded clothes and started redressing whilst she unburied herself to watch.
“Are you going to go after them?” she asked at last, wrapping her arms around her knees over the duvet. “Today?”
“I have to.” He paused in pulling his hoody on to look at her. “Every day I wait they get closer to me, and now to you. I shouldn't have come here.”
She growled and climbed across the bed to the wardrobe. “But you did, and now you know where you're going. What do you need me to do?”
“You need to keep your head down for a while.” He looked around for his boots and remembered that they were downstairs, then started packing things back into his satchel instead. “I'll give you the address of someone who'll help you.”
“I can't just hide whilst you're...” She waved a hand at him and propped the other on her hip. “There has to be something I can do, surely? Now you have the information, can't we take it to UNIT, or... anyone?”
He looked back at her and forced a smile. “My list of allies grows thin. I don't know who I can trust.” He sighed and grabbed a Post-It note from the desk, scribbling the address down on it. “You need to go to Sarah Jane Smith – she lives in North London, and she has access to the Subwave network. If anyone can help us, they'll be on that network. I can't go and put her in danger like that, but you'll be safe.”
She took the note from him and twisted it between her fingers. “I should come with you...” Folding the note, she turned away and picked out a pair of walking boots. “London, right. I'll borrow Dai's car – he won't mind. Less traceable than train or bus, I guess.”
“I'll give you some cash, and... and the surveillance kit,” he decided. “Everything I know is saved in there, all the evidence. You'll need it.”
“I didn't expect to bring down the government until after I graduated.” She looked up at the clock and frowned. “Do you think my lecturer will mind me missing one for this?”
“Extra credit, probably. You could even do an assignment on it.” Ianto set aside everything he couldn't take with him, keeping the lockpick and his multi-tool, a handful of cash and his guns, and passed her the surveillance kit. “Look after that.”
They walked into town together and parted ways outside her friend's house when she stopped in to borrow his car. Ianto hurried on to a book shop where he bought a handful of OS maps, including the right one, and then to the bus station. It took him three buses and two hours to get out to a village near the location of the base and, after stopping to pick at a sandwich in the pub, he set off walking to get there before nightfall.
It was heavy going by a round-about route along the edge of frozen fields. His boots, battered by the weeks of wear, protected his ankles on the uneven surface, but the branches of the hedges that lined his path tugged at his clothes and scratched at his face if he let his attention wander. The sun dipped behind the hedge, hiding the path in shadow and making it more perilous even as it gave him extra cover, and the temperature dropped with it and he started shivering, even in the thick jumper and at his quick pace. He wrapped his arms around his chest and tucked his face down into his damp scarf.
The cry of a fox rang across the fields, stabbing across his taut nerves like a shard of the ice underfoot. He was left shaken in the silence afterwards, disconcerted, distressed and completely alone. Each step was forced, one foot in front of the other, trudging onwards against the clock, knowing that he wouldn’t survive a night out here.
He rounded a small thicket of evergreen trees and came to a tall fence surrounding a group of buildings. There was still just enough light in the sky for him to make out the shapes of the buildings and the spaces between them, the occasional glint of light on glass at the windows, but the whole area was still and silent. Keeping his back to the forest, he edged to a post along the fence and pressed the lockpick against it. It flashed blue twice to indicate that the alarms had been deactivated, and he swapped it for his multi-tool. Down the line of the post, from his eye height downwards, he severed the link between the fence and the post, creating a neat opening. As soon as he reached the bottom he ducked through and used pieces of wire cut from the fence to hold the gap closed enough to pass inspection in the darkness.
Concrete blocks loomed out of the darkness at him like ghostly ships in the fog. Everything he saw suggested that the site was as disused as it purported to be, apart from the maintenance of the fence and the UPVC around some of the high windows. He opened the door to one of the buildings into a room of dust and neglect and sighed to himself. There was a large hangar in the middle of the complex, but getting to it would leave him exposed if there were anyone around.
Something crunched behind him, and he spun around to face it, pressing his back against the wall of the building and sliding into the doorway. The light of a torch panned across him, and he had barely a second to react before he felt a blossoming agony, heard the retort of a gun and the guard’s shouts, and had to sink to the ground under waves of dizzy nausea. Blood stained his hands, bright red in the torchlight, and when he looked up the guard was towering over him .
“Jones is here,” the man reported with amused frustration. “Don’t know how he got in, but he’s not going anywhere. I’ll bring him round to the med suite; with any luck, blood loss’ll get him in the night.”
Ianto closed his eyes and rested his head against the doorframe, wracked with shivers and in agony from his wound. Darkness pressed on him, and when the guard dragged him to his feet and pushed him forwards he felt himself stumble and then nothing.
Next chapter
