Chapter Text
Epilogue
Three Days Later
Ianto had forgotten how much he despised being in the hospital. He knew he wasn't alone in this feeling, but that didn't help much. It wasn't even the pain he minded—that was currently being alleviated by an IV drip he had reluctantly consented to--as much as the million little indignities that came with being a patient. Between the gown that didn't reach his knees, the silly socks they gave him to wear, being poked and prodded like some sort of lab rat at all hours of the day and night, he felt more ridiculous by the hour.
And then there was the boredom. He'd never been the sort to be content lazing about. He preferred to be doing things—preferably several of them at once. Having nothing to do made him anxious. And he really didn't like how sluggish the medicine made him feel. It was as if he were moving underwater. Thank goodness he was going home tomorrow.
Ianto rang for another cup of ice water. The tall, white Styrofoam cups delivered to his bedside were one of hospital's few redeeming features, he decided. After the first twenty-four hours, they'd let him have as much as he wanted. One of the friendlier nurses, Meghan, had taken to bringing him a cup whenever she stopped in, just because, she said, he enjoyed getting them so much.
But when the door opened, it wasn't Meghan or any of the others. It was Jack.
“Hi,” Jack said, his broad shoulders and big coat filling the doorway.
Ianto smiled. “Hi, yourself.”
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets, as if he wasn't sure how to proceed, and Ianto realized something he he'd never noticed before. Jack disliked hospitals too.
“I thought you'd be Meghan with my water.”
“Sorry. I could get her if you want.” Jack looked over his shoulder, as if he was about to turn around.
“I'm kidding! Come in.”
Jack did, and perched on the edge of the room's one chair. An awkward silence fell.
“So. This Meghan. She cute?” Jack finally essayed. It sounded a bit forced to Ianto's ears, but he had to give Jack points for trying.
“She's blonde, buxom, and said my smile makes her whole day.”
“Good for you! You should strike while the iron's hot. Request a sponge-bath.”
“Jack, she's 60, at least.”
“So?” Jack inquired, arching an eyebrow. “A woman with experience. That's a good thing.”
“Jack!” Ianto could feel the color rise in his cheeks and looked away. He'd started it, but he should have realized that drugged as he was, he was no match for Jack, even an awkward Jack.
“Maybe later.” Jack said. “Look, I wanted to let you know, I talked to Iolo. He told me everything. Or as much as I could stand to hear without throttling him.”
Ianto swallowed.
Jack reached out and took Ianto's hand. Ianto glanced down in surprise. Jack wasn't much for hand-holding in public. Technically speaking, he supposed, this room wasn't “public”, though given the never-ending parade of aides, nurses, techs and doctors, it felt like it.
“Ianto, this wasn't your fault.”
Ianto stared at their entwined hands so he wouldn't have to look at Jack. How the hell did Jack know what he'd been thinking? That was Jack all over, though. Most of the time he seemed oblivious to other people's feelings. But just when you’d concluded that he was completely clueless, he would come up with a keen and penetrating insight that made you wonder if he saw more than he pretended to.
“I know,” Ianto managed.
“You might know it up here, but do you know it in here?” Jack indicated Ianto's head, then his heavily bandaged chest.
“Yeah. No. I don't know. Jack, why are you asking me that?”
“Because you've been through enough torture at Iolo's hands. I don't want to see you adding to it.”
Ianto bit his lip, then immediately wished he hadn't. His lips, like the rest of him, were healing, but still sensitive. That had hurt.
“You couldn't have saved him, you know. He's a psychopath. The experts are just beginning to understand what that means in this time period, but their theory that the violence starts early with animals and then escalates to human beings is correct. If you hadn't intervened he probably would have gone on to kill somebody. Maybe a whole lot of somebodies. You did the right thing by telling someone.”
“He doesn't believe that.”
“And he never will. What's important is that you believe it.”
Ianto managed a shrug. “I guess. It makes sense when you put it like that. Look at what he did when he escaped. He could have gone anywhere, done anything he wanted.”
“Exactly my point! All he could think about was getting revenge on everyone that had ever wronged him, starting with you. Can you imagine somebody like that with Torchwood's resources? He could have gone on a killing spree to end all killing sprees, and used our resources to hide the evidence.”
Ianto shuddered. That was a little too close to what Suzie Costello had done. It wasn't hard to imagine at all.
“Thank goodness you stopped him.”
“I will always stop anyone that tries to hurt you,” Jack vowed. He sounded so sincere that it made Ianto's throat close and his eyes well up. He turned his face to the wall. Jack added his other hand to the knot their hands made and squeezed.
“Ianto, why didn't you tell me you had a brother? Or about your family? I had no idea you had relatives that used to live in Cardiff.”
“Why didn't you?” It sounded childish to Ianto even as he said it, but talking about Iolo was bad enough. He really didn't want to talk about why he had never talked about him before.
“That's different.”
“Is it? Why?” Great, now he sounded petulant too.
“Because Gray was a long, long time ago. Well, technically, far in the future, but a long time ago for me. I thought he was lost forever.”
“Iolo was a long time ago too, relatively speaking. No pun intended. And it isn't exactly something one drops into ordinary conversation, is it? I can't see, 'I locked up the alien de-aging device, how do you want your coffee and oh by the way, I have a psychopathic twin brother who lives in Providence Park' going over too well, do you?”
“But we were there! At Providence Park, when we were investigating the Night Travellers! Why didn't you say something then?”
“I wanted to, Jack. It took everything I had not to.” Ianto's voice wavered as the conflicting emotions he'd felt that day came flooding back. “But that's not why we were there. It wasn't about me or my problems. We were there to save lives. That would have just distracted us.”
God, he'd been a wreck that whole investigation. Visiting the Electro, the scene of the very few happy times he'd spent with his tad, had been bittersweet. His life-long passion for classic cinema had been born at the Electro, however, so the visit had been more sweet than bitter. But then their investigation had taken them to Providence Park, and Ianto had started to fall apart inside. He'd poured all his energy into tracking down the Ghost Maker and saving those trapped souls in order to keep himself together, and it had barely been worth it. They'd only managed to save one. He had spiraled into a dark place after that. If the Team, and Jack, hadn't needed him, he might never have left it.
“Your problems are important to me, Ianto. You should have said something. I could have helped.”
Ianto shook his head. “There's nothing you could have done. You're right, he's incurable. I followed his progress updates for years, until it just got too depressing. Nothing the doctors did made any difference. They never gave up hope, but he never showed any real change. Every time they thought he was improving, he'd attack someone who was trying to help him or attempt to escape, and they'd be right back where they started.”
Ianto looked over to find Jack gazing at him sadly. “That's not what I meant. I meant I could have helped you.”
“Oh.”
“That's the Ianto we know and love, always thinking of others first. But now that you mention it, maybe there is something we could do for him. There's no cure now, but by the 51st century they'd worked out something...” Jack's voice trailed off thoughtfully.
Ianto felt a sudden surge of bitterness. After all Iolo had put him through, Jack was trying to help him? And then what would he do once he was fixed, hire him to work alongside Ianto?
“And that's the Jack we know and love, always trying to play the hero. You should have shot him in the head when you had the chance. Sir.”
Jack startled, and from the way he was staring at him, Ianto wondered if he might not have some of that glint he'd noticed in Iolo's eyes after all.
“You don't mean that.”
“I do. It would make things a lot easier,” Ianto said.
Then he sighed. “No, I don't. Not really. I'm furious at him for what he did to me but I don't want that. But come on, Jack. Even if we have something from the future, we can't use it on him, can we? Don’t think I haven't thought about it. I have. It's pretty much all I've thought about the last couple of days. But despite what you might believe, I really did learn my lesson about trying to use Torchwood resources to save someone unsavable the last time around.”
Jack winced, and Ianto felt a twinge of guilt. Still, Jack had wanted to have this conversation. Might as well get it all out there.
“Ianto, that's not the same thing,” Jack protested. “He's mentally ill, not being controlled by an alien cyber-mind.”
“It would be using resources from the future to solve twenty-first century problems, which you've forbidden, remember? Timelines and paradoxes and all that.”
Jack removed one of his hands and scrubbed it through his hair. “Maybe you're right,” he admitted.
“I know I am. Jack, you mean well, and I appreciate it. But isn't it possible that you're trying so hard to save my brother because you couldn't save yours?”
Jack looked at him like Ianto had just had a surprising insight, himself.
“Maybe I am, at that. So what do we do? Andy's offered to have him arrested after they patch him up.”
“The press would have a field day with that.’Escaped mental patient kidnaps twin brother?' Can you imagine if it ever went to trial? The publicity would be nightmare.”
“I'd put up with up with it if that's what you wanted.”
Ianto realized what a gift the secretive-to-a-fault Jack was offering, and felt his anger subside. That Jack was asking him, rather than telling him, what they should do with Iolo was a gift in itself, in fact.
“No, Jack. Thank you, but no. I don't want that kind of publicity either. In all likelihood he'd wind up right back in Providence Park anyway. If anyone can plead the the Insanity Defense it's him. We might as well just Retcon him and send him back ourselves.”
“That's not very satisfying.”
Ianto nodded. “I agree. I just don't see what else we can do. We can't kill him in cold blood. But he can’t be cured by twenty-first century means either. If I didn't believe that before he broke out, I do now.”
Ianto's eyes strayed to the middle distance and he touched his chest. “He shot me here, on the right side, not the left, to make sure I wouldn't die too fast. Did he tell you that? I saw his eyes when he did it, Jack. They were like--like ice. He always had that side of him, but there used to be something else there too. Something warmer. I don't think it's there anymore.”
Jack squeezed his hand. “I know the feeling. Maybe if he's so cold we should freeze him, like we did Gray.”
“We could. But that would mean a lot of Retcon and altered documents to erase him from the minds of everyone who's seen him in the last few days. It hardly seems worth it. And besides, Gray didn't belong in this world. We had no other place to put him. Iolo does.”
“So we send him back,” Jack concluded. There was a pause where they both contemplated this. “They'll increase security on him, but he'll probably never stop plotting to get revenge on you, you know. His resentment goes back decades. Unless we Retcon him all the way to infancy, I can't guarantee that will stop.”
Ianto shuddered. “Don't do that. We'll just have to be prepared on the off-change he manages to escape again.”
“We'll be ready. And Andy will be ready too. I've explained the situation to him. He's to report directly to me if he ever sees “you” acting strangely. Well, stranger than usual, I mean.”
A smile flickered across Ianto's lips. “Good plan. Although it occurs to me that Andy knows quite a bit about us now. Are you OK with that?”
Jack shrugged. “Not really. But we've been taking on too much ourselves, lately. Maybe it's time I—we—shared the load a little.”
“He's a good man, Jack. I think that's the right call.”
“He's a good-looking man, too,” Jack said with a grin. “I have his home phone number, you know,” he tapped the pocket where his phone resided with a sly smile. Ianto smiled back, wider this time.
“I knew it. You're throwing me over already. I'm out of commission less than a week and you're already sniffing around somewhere else.”
“Who said anything about throwing you over? You're invited.”
“If I had a free hand, I'd be hitting you with a pillow right now.”
“What? I can share. In fact, you can be the star of the show. You'll barely even know I'm there.”
“Jack! Stop it. You're winding up a wounded man. If these stitches come open Meghan is going to give you hell.”
“Hey, at least I didn't make any jokes about 'doubling my pleasure' with the Jones twins. You have to give me something, here.”
Ianto cringed inwardly at the thought such a threesome, but Jack was trying, in the best way he knew, to show Ianto that everything was going to be all right, and Ianto appreciated it. Jack had already assured him that Iolo's claims about kissing had been exaggerated, and had looked so genuinely appalled by the idea that he could have unknowingly gone further with the impostor that Ianto had believed him.
So Ianto played along, and rolled his eyes in the exaggerated manner Jack adored.
“I appreciate your restraint. I know how much you love twins. Acrobats, weren't they?”
“I told you that story?”
“Repeatedly.”
“Whoops?”
“Jack, could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Could you see where Meghan is with that water? I can't seem to get enough of it these days.
Jack rose. “Of course. And when we get back the Hub I'll install the best water fountain money can buy, just for you.”
“You’re the one that’s always wanted a water fountain. I'd never be able to get near it,” Ianto laughed. Then he winced.
“What's wrong?”
“Hurts,” he said, indicating his shoulder. “The painkiller is starting to wear off.”
“Well, I'm not surprised. The bullet nearly went all the way through. I'll have them bring more drugs too, shall I?”
Ianto hesitated, and then said, “Why not? One more dose, just enough to get me through the night. But I'm swearing it off tomorrow. I hate the way it makes me feel.”
“I know,” Jack said, gazing at Ianto fondly. “You're tough.”
“I'm not. I just know how to fake it.” Ianto sought out a more comfortable position on his pillows, one that didn't aggravate his shoulder as much. “I bet somewhere Owen is loving this. I can just hear him saying, 'Karma is fucking bitch, in'nt, Yan-toe?'”
“Maybe he is,” Jack grinned.
Ianto grinned back. “There's one more thing.”
“Yes?”
Ianto freed his hand from Jack's, and then reached out, slid his hand inside Jack's coat, and grabbed one of Jack's bracers. Jack's eyebrows went skyward but he allowed himself to be tugged toward Ianto until their faces were centimeters apart. Ianto cocked his head to the side as if to say, "well?"
“I don't want to hurt you,” Jack murmured.
“You won't unless you bite,” Ianto said.
“I'll try to restrain myself.”
Jack closed the distance between them, allowing his lips to brush Ianto's. The touch was feather-light, just enough to send a delicious shiver down Ianto's spine, and then Jack made to move away.
Ianto grasped the back of his head and pulled him in for a proper kiss, complete with tongue.
When Ianto finally released him, Jack looked surprised, breathless, and pleased as punch.
“Mam-gu Bethan always said, "Kiss like you mean it," Ianto explained.
Jack nodded. “A wise woman. You take after her.”
“I'd like to think so.”
“Oh, you do, Mr. Jones. You do. Now let's get you that water.”
Ianto watch Jack leave the room, admiring the way the greatcoat swirled around his legs even though there was no wind to blow it. The poor coat was looking quite battered. He'd have to see to the repairs as soon as he got out of here.
Ianto started making a mental list of things to do when he got out, and realized how much he was looking forward to going back to the Hub. Going back home.
--fin--