Cathryn (formerly catslash) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
remindmeofthe) wrote2009-05-18 11:42 pm
remindmeofthe) wrote2009-05-18 11:42 pm
Entry tags:
"Second Look," PG-13, genfic, Owen, Ianto
OMG. You guys. YOU GUYS. The Owen in the recent past 'verse. I THINK I FINISHED IT. I figured out where to end it (!!!!!), so then I wrote it. And now it's done.
So, uh. HERE IT IS.
TITLE: "Second Look"
AUTHOR: Cathryn (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catslash)
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Owen, Ianto; Ianto/Lisa, past Owen/Katie
RATING: PG-13 for language. Genfic.
WORD COUNT: Approximately 6000.
SUMMARY: Sometimes, you get a chance to see the past through a different pair of eyes: your own. Set between "From Out of the Rain" and "Adrift," and during/after "Cyberwoman."
NOTES: Thanks togileonnen, who first inspired the idea during some random conversation; to nightanddaze, for looking over the finished result to make sure it made sense; and to those two again and other folks on the flist for staying interested and thus helping to keep me interested. This fic has been a nightmare to complete (over a year from start to finish! It even got a tag of its own on my journal, the name of which I got from supervillainess, so thanks to her, too) and I never could have gotten it done without you guys.
NOTES PART THE SECOND: Take the timeline here with a grain of salt. Since the Whoniverse timeline is so notoriously fuzzy, and I needed solid dates, I ended up just pulling a timeframe out of thin air and hoping that it would make sense.
SPOILERS: Up through 2x12, "Fragments."
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood was created by Russell T Davies and belongs to the BBC. I take no credit and make no money.
Owen always sort of thought that something like this might happen to one of them eventually. He just thought it would be more - dramatic. But it doesn't happen in the midst of chaos, with the Hub shaking and Jack shouting orders while Tosh calls out numbers and the rest of them run about trying to get things done faster than humanly possible. It doesn't happen when Owen's walking home, lost in thought, looking up in astonishment to see the flare of the Rift.
It happens when he's in the medical bay, organizing supplies. It takes extra concentration - he can't feel what his hands are doing, so he has to watch them closely - which is why he doesn't realize right away that Ianto is there.
"Jesus Christ, Ianto, you have to sneak up on me like that?" he snaps, annoyed because the startle reflex is one thing he hasn't lost, though god only knows what use it is now except making him look like a prat.
"It's June seventeenth," Ianto says. Owen searches his memory for some kind of significance attached to the date, comes up with nothing, and looks at him blankly.
"So?" he asks.
Ianto looks back at him for a couple of seconds, then his gaze flicks past Owen, catching on something else.
"You'll see," he says. A flare of white light washes out his face. Owen turns and everything has changed.
He's alone, in a white, half-lit hallway he's never seen before. At the end of it is a door, sporting a chipped and faded Torchwood logo.
"What the fuck?" he mutters blankly as his mind takes a few seconds to catch up with events. The thing about having spent the last four years working for Torchwood, though, is that he really only needs a few seconds before he's able to start thinking again. He looks around him, taking in details and sorting them out. He has, not through any effort or fault of his own, changed locations instantaneously. The logo on the door seems to indicate that he's still in Torchwood, probably buried in one of the deep lower levels that hasn't been used for decades.
His hand is almost to his earpiece before he realizes - from Ianto's perspective, he must have simply disappeared, a good twenty seconds ago by now. Plenty of time to alert the others. But they haven't contacted him. Either something's interfering with the signal, or . . .
. . . or he works on top of a Rift in space and time.
"Fuck," Owen whispers, letting his hand drop. He tries out of habit to take a steadying breath, remembers that it doesn't really work like that for him anymore, and settles for quietly swearing again instead.
Fucking wonderful. He's going to have to find out, somehow, exactly when he is before he goes back up to the Hub. Standard Torchwood protocol, as well as being common fucking sense, and isn't it an exciting moment when those two mesh? He glances down at his hip before he remembers that he isn't armed, either. Even better. In an unknown area of Torchwood at an unknown point in time and he has no way to defend himself.
About the only positive in all this is that, if he does run into any staff, this is Torchwood. He won't have to waste time inventing a story to explain his presence.
On the other hand - this is Torchwood. Ianto's inflicted upon them all sorts of stories he's dug up about how things have been run here in the past. Owen may not get a chance to tell where he's from before he finds himself having to explain why being shot is more a permanent inconvenience than anything else.
Owen swears one last time, then starts walking cautiously toward the door. It seems like as good a place as any to start. As he draws closer, he can see in the poor light of the hallway that the room on the other side is fully lit. He stands at the door and listens carefully, but he hears nothing except the faint sounds of - medical equipment?
He forgets his nerves for a moment amidst curiosity. Why is someone who's ill enough to need monitoring hidden so far down in the complex? If the alarms go off, who could possibly get here in time, if anyone hears them at all?
There is no way the answer to that can be anything I want to know about, he thinks, but carefully eases the door open anyway.
The occupant is a sleeping woman, partially encased in metal, nightmarishly familiar. Owen stares, stunned, then hastily and quietly closes the door before she can wake up and see him.
"Oh, my god."
The voice is not his. Owen whips around to find a stark-white Ianto staring at him from the other end of the hall.
"'June seventeenth,'" Owen realizes aloud. "You bastard, you knew."
Then he remembers that there is a soon-to-be homicidal Cyberman less than ten feet away from him on the other side of the door, and he'd just as soon not wake her up. He starts down the hall toward Ianto, who is already talking.
"Owen - Owen, I can explain what you just saw -"
"Ianto."
"- It isn't what it looks like, she's not one of them -"
"Ianto."
" - her name is Lisa, Lisa Hallett, Owen, please, you can't tell Jack -"
"IANTO!" Owen barks. "Can I get a word in edgeways here?"
"I - of course, Owen, I'm sorry," Ianto says. The desperation in his voice irritates Owen further. Stupid fucking kid, he thinks, though whether it's because Ianto doesn't seem to have made any plans for his girlfriend's discovery other than grovelling, or because he brought her down here in the first place, Owen isn't sure.
"All right, Ianto," he says, in the clear and deliberate tones of addressing the slightly impaired, "let's just get this clear right off. I don't give a shit about your metal girlfriend, all right? I have much bigger problems. Do you understand?"
". . . all right. Yes," Ianto says carefully. His panicked expression smooths out, though he doesn't relax.
"Good. Now tell me, what is the date?"
"The - ?" Ianto looks at him blankly for a moment. Then his gaze sharpens and he starts really looking at Owen. Owen watches him take things in - the bandaged hand, the clothes that don't match whatever he saw Owen wearing earlier - and recants his previous exasperated assessment of Ianto's intelligence. He can actually see it all click into place behind Ianto's eyes.
"September twenty-third, 2008," Ianto says slowly. "Though I expect that's not the answer you want to hear."
"September 2008," Owen repeats incredulously.
"I'm afraid so."
"Nine months? I've gone back in time nine months? What's the fucking point of that?"
Ianto actually looks amused for half a second. "You would have preferred 1908?"
"At least that would make sense! Nine sodding months, that's just the Rift taking the piss!"
Ianto shrugs. "At least you're not stuck fifty years out from when you were born or something. Jack can probably even find a way to send you back."
"Jack - fuck! No. No, he can't find out." The hope ignited by Ianto's words is crushed almost immediately as Owen realizes what's likely to happen if Jack sees him up close enough to realize that he's - different now, and god, it would be nice to save himself like that, but he did the reading when he signed on. He knows better than to create a time paradox.
"Why not?" Ianto asks in surprise, and some wariness.
"There are things he can't know," Owen says simply, not quite successful at keeping the disappointment from his voice.
Ianto raises an eyebrow. "And I can?" he says, making no apparent effort to keep the skepticism from his.
Owen would like to think it won't come to that, but Ianto knows how to fit things together. Eventually, it will come to that. But that prospect doesn't send up the same warning flags in Owen's mind as does the thought of Jack finding him and working it out. "Yes," he says. "You are, in spite of all current evidence to the contrary" - he glances pointedly toward Lisa's door - "the sensible type. Jack - isn't." Which was putting it mildly sometimes.
Ianto nods in agreement, or at least understanding, with a promptness that forces Owen to stifle a sudden grin. He knows his Ianto is under no illusions about Jack, but he had assumed that development came about as a result of their esteemed leader's recent absence. He hadn't known it had started a bit earlier than that.
"You know a thing or two about keeping people hidden down here," Owen continues. "I can't risk going to Jack for help. I'm going to have to wait this out and I'll probably need every trick you know to do it." He looks Ianto in the eye. "And I know I can trust you not to ask questions I can't answer."
"Of course not," Ianto says, but he darts a longing glance toward Lisa's door. Owen thinks about the secrets he's going to have to keep, about some of the things he won't be able to save them all from, and begins to understand exactly how hard the next nine months are going to be.
**********
There's a wing full of furnished, if heavily dusty, bedrooms on the floor above Lisa; Ianto explains matter-of-factly that, once upon a time, Torchwood employees were "encouraged" to live on the premises, but that stopped back in 1963 when an alien virus wiped out almost the entire staff.
"I love our job," Owen says in response to this. Whatever Ianto's reply was going to be gets lost when he takes a breath to speak and immediately sneezes four times in a row.
"Perhaps," he says when he's finished, pulling out an immaculate handkerchief, "we should start cleaning up in here."
"Just bring down the stuff and I'll do it," Owen answers. He hates cleaning and he's so hopeless at it that Ianto will probably end up doing it himself anyway out of some uncontrollable neat freak urge, but if he's going to be stuck with Ianto as his only human contact for the better part of a year then he'd just as soon start things off on the right foot.
Ianto raises his eyebrows. "I think I know why you don't want Jack to find you. You've had a personality transplant, haven't you?"
Owen laughs, not without an edge to it. "Something like that."
Ianto slides him a look. "Best get things taken care of, then."
Ianto's efficient nature, which Owen has taken for granted more often than not in the past - or the future, or both, god, this is going to be nine straight months of headaches - is a godsend now. The room is an inhabitable space within two hours, with Ianto lasting an impressive twenty-five minutes before he takes the dustrag away from Owen. The CCTV cameras on this floor are disabled and the footage they'd already taken deleted, Ianto has solved more mundane problems like clothing and keeping clean, and he's even remembered that Owen will go mad with boredom without anything to occupy his attention.
"I'll bring you some books," Ianto says, "and I've got this." He presents Owen with a sleek laptop. In the back, plugged in where the power adaptor should go, is a small round piece of equipment, metallic green and about three centimeters across. Ianto taps it. "It's alien, came through the Rift about three years ago. It can hijack just about any signal within ten miles or so. You can use it to ring my mobile if you need to, watch telly, or download whatever sort of appalling pornography is no doubt to your taste."
Owen takes the laptop and grins. The Internet isn't exactly his idea of a social life, but it'll be better than relying solely on Ianto to keep him abreast of what's going on outside. "Ianto, you're brilliant."
Ianto smiles, pleased, but keeps going. "I believe I've worked something out for food storage -"
Owen winces. He can't believe he didn't see this coming. Ianto sees the expression and falls silent. Owen casts about for the least suspicious way to put it, then decides that there is no least suspicious way for a human being to explain that he won't need feeding any time soon and simply plunges on ahead.
"No need," he says. Ianto frowns.
"'No need'?"
"No need. Don't waste your time." He fixes Ianto with a serious look. "There are certain things you are going to have to trust me on, Ianto. This is one of them. And don't give me that Torchwood look, if I had any sort of nefarious plan, I'd bloody well pretend to be normal as possible, wouldn't I?"
Ianto keeps the look on him for another few seconds, but apparently can't find anything in his logic to object to, because he finally says, "Then if we're done here for now, I have other business to see to."
Owen nods. "Tell Lisa I said hi." Of course, he thinks. Ianto has no choice but to trust him for the time being. He won't want Jack poking around down here.
Which, if Owen is remembering correctly, gives him about three days to prove to Ianto that he can be trusted for the next nine months.
**********
In the end, winning Ianto's trust is so easy it's almost depressing.
Owen is sitting on the bed in his little hideaway, exploring the alien tech on the laptop to see how far he can push it and how well it covers its tracks, when he hears, very faintly, the sound of medical alarms rising through the floor. Doctor's instinct kicks in and he's on his feet and halfway down the hall to the stairs when he realizes - it's Lisa, of course.
It isn't that day, not yet. But should he really be getting involved? Shouldn't he just let it be, let things run their course?
But what happens if she dies ahead of schedule?
. . . what if now is when she was supposed to die and it was his interference that led to that disaster?
No, he thinks. What happened happened and if he spends the next nine months second-guessing his every step he will drive himself mad. Just make sure things happen now the way they happened before. Right now, that means seeing to it that Lisa doesn't die.
He hasn't stopped moving as the questions flash through his mind. He already knew on some level what his decision would be. He is a doctor, there is a patient who needs help, and no one else can get there in time. He wonders as he enters Lisa's room how Ianto has managed on his own for so long.
Lisa is lying quietly in her unit, her breathing even and steady. Owen's own mental alarms go off. There's no way she's completely unresponsive, not when she's going to be up and committing murder in two days' time. He approaches cautiously, tense and ready to run if he has to, but she doesn't move.
It only takes about thirty seconds to find the problem once he's close enough to take a good look. Some of the wiring hooking her up to the machinery has been knocked loose. Owen fixes it and the alarm falls silent.
He takes a slow step back and looks at her face, so still and serene he can't tell if she's faking or not. She's given no sign of being aware of his presence. She must be, though; that wiring can't have come loose on its own. Not about to give herself away, he thinks, and wonders exactly how long she's had Ianto fooled.
She probably thinks he is Ianto. He'd be wise to leave before she changes her mind on that count.
Owen slips out of the room. At least he knows he hasn't changed anything. Lisa was never in any danger. Only someone without formal medical training, someone gone half-mad with grief and desperation, would believe her to be as ill as she's making herself out to be. She hasn't survived in spite of Ianto's inexperience - she's thrived because of it.
That had been his theory when this first happened, the only explanation he could come up with as to how the hell she could have possibly lived in this little room for over a year with only a secretary to attend to her needs. He is, even in the grimness of the situation, pleased to find that he was right.
He hears footsteps on the stairs just as he's closing the door, and tenses in panic for a few agonizing seconds before Ianto emerges into the hallway. He pulls up short when he sees Owen, eyes flicking toward Owen's hand, and lets out a long exhale when he sees the bandages.
"For just a second I thought -" he begins.
"Yeah, me too," Owen says. "I was wondering how the fuck I was going to explain this one." Yes, Jack, I am a walking corpse from the future, but no, the half-converted cyberman does not belong to me. That'd go over well.
"Is Lisa all right?" Ianto asks, moving toward him and the door.
"Yeah. She's fine." He gives Ianto a reassuring smile, thinking fast. Can't have Ianto getting suspicious now. But then, this can't be the first time this has happened, either, and if there's one thing Ianto excels at when it comes to Lisa, it's denial. He settles on the truth. Easier to remember later. "Loose wires is all. I've seen better equipment. How'd you know to come down, anyway?" he asks. A minor subject change wouldn't hurt, just in case.
Ianto digs into his pocket and pulls out his mobile, holding it up. "I've got it wired to go off when the alarms do. Lisa told me how."
"She conscious often?" Owen asks casually.
"Off and on. More on than off lately." Ianto smiles, a bright, open expression that makes him look as young as he really is. Owen's not sure he's ever seen Ianto look happy in quite this way. He's a bit taken aback by the novelty of seeing such an uncomplicated look on Ianto's face and almost misses what Ianto says next.
"Thank you, Owen."
He wasn't expecting that, and fumbles a little. "Oh. Not a problem. I mean, 'smy job."
Ianto steps closer, looking at him seriously now. "Taking care of Lisa is my job right now." He pauses. His eyes search Owen's face for something - a hint of times beyond "right now," Owen thinks. He puts a hand on Ianto's shoulder to distract his attention.
"Stop that," he says gently. Ianto flushes faintly, dropping his gaze.
"I know," he says, "I don't mean to - and I won't ask. It's just so hard not to wonder." He looks up with a small smile. "And good to know that you'll run to her side if she needs you."
It takes everything Owen's got not to flinch at the hope in Ianto's eyes. Fuck. He drops his hand and says,
"I'm a doctor. I heard the alarms. It's instinct. Now," he continues, making his tone a bit more brisk, "I've got a patient in there who's probably asleep, but might like a visit anyway if you've got time to spare before you're missed." He gives Ianto a smile and steps aside.
Ianto smiles back, another of the simple, joyful smiles Owen has never seen before and knows he won't ever see again. "Thank you, Owen."
Owen nods and turns toward the stairs before his own smile can start looking too strained. It shouldn't be possible, but he feels sick.
**********
Two days later, Ianto stops by briefly in the early morning.
"I've got a visitor coming in to see Lisa," he says, eyes shining with excitement, "so if you hear extra noise downstairs, don't worry, it's just us."
"All right," Owen says. He makes himself wait until he's sure Ianto is on the stairs before he gets up and locks his door.
The entire day passes, shredding away at his nerves, before he finally hears Tanizaki's screams rising through the floor. Owen gets up slowly and slides under his bed, just in case. He looks at his watch and waits.
**********
Owen came in with the worst hangover he'd had in years, from trying to drink Katie away, trying to drown thoughts of how far he would have gone to save her if he'd had the chance. It hadn't worked.
And now this.
"Tanizaki doesn't need an autopsy, Jack, we already know what he died of."
"Do the autopsy, Owen. Ianto will be bearing witness."
"It's an autopsy, not a wedding, I don't need a witness. And you're not fooling anyone, least of all me. Whyn't you just cut to the chase and thrash him with your belt? I'll even hold him down if you're so bloody keen to have me involved."
"Owen, I'm going to thrash you with my belt in a minute if you don't do what you're damn well told."
So he did the autopsy, or started to, but after half an hour of Ianto's silent, shellshocked presence wearing on his nerves (anythingiwouldhavedoneanything) he threw down his scalpel and snarled into the microphone,
"And it turns out he died of a great fucking piece of metal lodged in his skull, what a surprise, and if you ever even think of pulling a stunt like this again, Jack, you can go fuck yourself." He ripped off his gloves, threw them next to the scalpel, and stalked out of the autopsy room.
"I'm going out!" he yelled. "Someone ring me if any real medical work needs doing!"
Jack never said anything to him about it, and if he'd opted to punish Ianto any further after that, he'd done so in private.
**********
It turns out hiding was unnecessary. Owen can hear some of the goings-on downstairs drifting up through the floor, but he never hears anything in the hall outside his door. Eventually, when things have gone quiet, he pulls himself out from under the bed and sits on the edge of it. The thought of just staying here is unexpectedly maddening. He knows what's happened and what is probably still playing out in the Hub, but the urge to check it's all going the way it's meant to is strong.
That's completely out of the question, though, so Owen picks up the laptop to try and distract himself. He's still failing utterly at being distracted some time later when there's a knock at his door.
"Owen?" Ianto's voice is rough and hoarse, but composed. Owen stares at the door in surprise; he'd expected Ianto to be a bit too busy to come see him, tonight as well as for the next few days. He wonders briefly if Jack might be standing out there, too, having pulled the confession of Owen's presence out of a drained and stunned Ianto - but, no. No, even unstable as he is right now, Ianto can be counted on to have kept quiet, if only because continuing to keep a secret from Jack would appeal as some level of vengeance for Lisa. Owen gets up, unlocks, and opens the door.
Ianto looks even worse than he remembers from that night - from this night. His suit is covered in blood, face streaked with grime and tears. His expression collapses in relief under the tear tracks when he sees Owen.
"Thank god," he breathes. He reaches out and puts a hand on Owen's arm. Owen glances down and sees Ianto's knuckles going white from the force of his grip. Probably leaving a bruise, not that it really matters.
"Come on, come inside, we'll shut the door," he says. Just in case Jack comes looking. Ianto lets Owen draw him into the room, still holding his arm, saying,
"I didn't - I didn't know if she'd come through here, I didn't have a chance to check, I didn't know if you -"
"It's all right, mate," Owen soothes, forcing himself to meet Ianto's desperate gaze. Little wonder he'd run tonight, nine months ago, the moment he could. He'd seen that look in the mirror for a long time after Katie died. Even now, with everything that's happened to force him to finally accept her loss, looking into Ianto's eyes and facing that pain is the last thing he wants to do. He does it, though, because nine months ago no one else did and Owen can't leave him alone in this, no matter how badly Ianto may have fucked up. "I'm right here, see? I'm fine. She didn't even come anywhere near here."
"Oh, god, Owen," Ianto says brokenly. Owen waits for it, for Ianto to continue with, You knew and you didn't tell me, but Ianto's face crumples and Owen sees that that level of thinking and making connections is beyond Ianto's reach right now. No doubt that conversation will come later, but for the moment Owen has a different problem. He puts his hands on Ianto's shoulder and says, not ungently,
"None of that, Ianto. Come on. No time for that. How long d'you think you've got before Jack comes to check up on you?" He sees the flash in Ianto's eyes at the sound of Jack's name and seizes on it, sharpening his voice a bit. "That's right, keep it together. Don't give that bastard the fucking satisfaction."
Ianto takes a deep breath, his mouth hardening into a thin line. Owen drops his hands and glances away for a few seconds to give Ianto space to compose himself. Ianto lets go of his arm.
"Right. I just. Needed to make sure you were all right. I should go - I have to get Tanizaki into the lift and bring him upstairs."
Of course. Of course Jack is making him do that. And then tomorrow, that stunt with the autopsy . . . and, Owen realizes, undoubtedly leaving Ianto to clear up the mess Owen will storm out on.
Funny, how the last few months have changed his perspective of this night. Of Jack.
"All right," he says impulsively, "I'll help." Ianto shakes his head.
"Better not. He might come down."
Owen suspects Jack probably won't - all the better for letting Ianto steep in the atrocities he helped to happen, after all - but he nods anyway.
"Yeah. Better keep clear for a few days," he added. "He'll be watching where you go."
Ianto's expression tightens further. "Yes," he says. "I'll come back when I can." He turns to the door and grabs the handle, then pauses and turns back. "I'm glad you're all right," he tells Owen, then leaves before Owen can reply. Not that he'd know what to say.
**********
Owen's never been very good at patience. Or at waiting. He's beginning to settle in down here, to see exactly what his routine is going to look like for months, and he thinks he might break his teeth from grinding them in frustration. This is nothing but waiting. Waiting for the next big thing to happen, as a way of marking the time. Waiting for Ianto's next visit (six days and counting since Lisa). Waiting for time to come back round so he can join the world again.
And to add insult to injury, he can't even do half the things that would help pass the time a bit faster and keep him sane. He can't sleep, so he's awake for every sodding second of every sodding day. He can't drink, which would have been an excellent way to make this ordeal go by in a garbled flash. He can't even have a wank.
He reads every book Ianto brought down, even the boring ones, and it's Ianto who picked them so most of them are boring. He spends so much time on the laptop that he thinks he will have managed to view the entire Internet before this is all over. He works on a technique he was trying out before, a sort of meditation that would at least let him shut his mind down for a while. That one was Tosh's idea. When he'd objected, since meditation was for Buddhists and hippies, she'd said reasonably, "You may not physically require sleep, but no one can survive - mentally, I mean - being on all the time." He'd given in, because that did make sense, and because he owed it to Tosh to listen to her every now and then.
He's getting better at it, sort of, and he does get some mileage out of imagining how she'll smile when he tells her in nine months how her Buddhist hippy nonsense saved his sanity. He'll likely have perfected it beyond her wildest dreams by then.
He's half-sunk into it when there finally comes a knock on the door. He blinks to refocus himself, then gets up and opens the door to let Ianto in.
Ianto steps in past him, saying, "You might want to check who it is before you just open the door."
Owen snorts. "Ianto, if anyone else finds out there's a reason to come down to this particular room, I don't think they'll bother knocking."
Ianto concedes the point with a nod. "I'm sorry it's been so long. It's been - difficult to get a moment to myself." He doesn't quite meet Owen's eyes when he says that, but looks back up as he continues, "Have you been all right down here?"
"Fantastic," Owen says. "This is going to be the best nine months ever."
An uncertain frown flickers across Ianto's face, and Owen reminds himself that Ianto's sarcasm detector probably isn't up to snuff at the moment. "I'm fine," he corrects himself quickly. "It's been fine. Not very exciting, but thanks to you I've at least got enough to do to keep myself halfway sane."
It's the right thing to say - Ianto smiles. Not the bright smile of a week and a half ago - it's thin and subdued, looking more like the kinds of smiles he's used to seeing on Ianto - but it still counts. Owen smiles back.
"That's good," Ianto says, then falls silent. The smile disappears, but he keeps looking at Owen. Here it is, Owen thinks, now's the conversation he was expecting before. He doesn't want to have it any more than he did then, but he can't put it off, either. It doesn't seem fair to make Ianto ask, so Owen says,
"You know I couldn't tell you." That's the sum of his argument, so he stops there, folding his arms across his chest and uncomfortably returning Ianto's look. Ianto's face went blank the second Owen opened his mouth to speak; his tone is equally featureless as he answers,
"I know."
And that's just unfair, it really fucking is, worse than an argument. Owen knows it's not okay with Ianto, because how could it be, if someone had known what would happen to Katie and not said word one Owen would not have been fucking okay with that and he would have let them know about it, loudly and violently. If Ianto had a go at him, he could handle that. But instead he's just standing there, looking at Owen, totally closed down, so Owen keeps talking.
"I'd have said if I could. I would have. Hell, I'd write you a fucking list for the next few months if I could. But -"
"Time paradox," Ianto interrupts. "Owen, I know." The stress on the last two words is sharp enough to stop Owen talking and make him take a closer look at Ianto. He looks - tense round the edges all of a sudden, a veiled hardness in his eyes and a faint line between his eyebrows.
"All right," Owen says, forcing himself to back off. "I just - I'm sorry. That's all. I remember it all and I'm sorry."
Ianto closes his eyes hard. "Thank you," he says, just above a whisper. Owen hesitates, then, not sure which of them he's doing it for, he says briskly,
"Right, now that's settled." He goes over to the semi-organized stack of books and holds a couple of them up, saying, "Overall, I'm afraid your taste in books is rubbish, but these two were good, so if you're taking requests . . ." He keeps talking, not quite watching as Ianto's face clears and the tension smooths away. By the time Owen's done, Ianto looks completely bland and neutral once more, and Owen thinks that Ianto's much better at barely keeping it together than he ever was. He turns to put the books back down, thinking that maybe he'll tell Ianto about Katie one of these days.
Then he sees his shadow on the wall, black and sharply defined when it wasn't even there a moment ago, and says, "Oh, fucking wonderful."
When he turns back round, he is so surprised to see Ianto there still - or again, whatever - that he doesn't immediately take in the change in their surroundings. Ianto looks completely different to how he did ten comparative seconds ago, his expression mirroring Owen's surprise.
"Now what's the date?" Owen asks, wincing at the plaintive tone to his voice. But honest to god, if the Rift's decided to make a career of bouncing him around -
"June seventeenth," Ianto says. "You've been gone about fifteen seconds."
Owen absorbs this in silence for a moment, trying to get his mind up to speed with the sudden shift from that Ianto to this. "How tidy."
"It wasn't quite what I expected," Ianto agrees. He speaks quietly, catching Owen's attention; Owen takes a closer look at him and sees, for the first time, that nine months isn't very long at all. The change between that Ianto and this isn't as dramatic as he's had them all believing.
"Ianto -" he begins, but he's interrupted as Ianto tilts his head slightly in a familiar gesture, putting his hand to his earpiece.
". . . No, we're fine . . . understood, sir." He looks at Owen. "They've noticed the Rift activity. We're wanted upstairs."
"'Course we are," Owen says. "God forbid I get five minutes to get my bearings." He's not sure whether it's lingering paranoia, or maybe something else that brought itself to his attention in the last week and a half, but Jack is the last person he wants to talk to right now.
"Don't let me punch him," he continues, holding up his bandaged hand. "I can't afford to do any more damage than I already have."
"I'll do my best," Ianto says, then hesitates. "I know you'll have just come from being on the other end of this conversation, but -" He reaches out and takes Owen's hand in his, running his fingertips over the bandages. "I am sorry."
"I know," Owen says, meeting his eyes. "So am I."
"I know." Ianto lets go of his hand. Owen lets it drop.
"So let's go get this over with," he says. "Then -" He pauses for a long moment. "Then there's someone I want to tell you about."
So, uh. HERE IT IS.
TITLE: "Second Look"
AUTHOR: Cathryn (
catslash)CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Owen, Ianto; Ianto/Lisa, past Owen/Katie
RATING: PG-13 for language. Genfic.
WORD COUNT: Approximately 6000.
SUMMARY: Sometimes, you get a chance to see the past through a different pair of eyes: your own. Set between "From Out of the Rain" and "Adrift," and during/after "Cyberwoman."
NOTES: Thanks to
gileonnen, who first inspired the idea during some random conversation; to nightanddaze, for looking over the finished result to make sure it made sense; and to those two again and other folks on the flist for staying interested and thus helping to keep me interested. This fic has been a nightmare to complete (over a year from start to finish! It even got a tag of its own on my journal, the name of which I got from supervillainess, so thanks to her, too) and I never could have gotten it done without you guys.NOTES PART THE SECOND: Take the timeline here with a grain of salt. Since the Whoniverse timeline is so notoriously fuzzy, and I needed solid dates, I ended up just pulling a timeframe out of thin air and hoping that it would make sense.
SPOILERS: Up through 2x12, "Fragments."
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood was created by Russell T Davies and belongs to the BBC. I take no credit and make no money.
Owen always sort of thought that something like this might happen to one of them eventually. He just thought it would be more - dramatic. But it doesn't happen in the midst of chaos, with the Hub shaking and Jack shouting orders while Tosh calls out numbers and the rest of them run about trying to get things done faster than humanly possible. It doesn't happen when Owen's walking home, lost in thought, looking up in astonishment to see the flare of the Rift.
It happens when he's in the medical bay, organizing supplies. It takes extra concentration - he can't feel what his hands are doing, so he has to watch them closely - which is why he doesn't realize right away that Ianto is there.
"Jesus Christ, Ianto, you have to sneak up on me like that?" he snaps, annoyed because the startle reflex is one thing he hasn't lost, though god only knows what use it is now except making him look like a prat.
"It's June seventeenth," Ianto says. Owen searches his memory for some kind of significance attached to the date, comes up with nothing, and looks at him blankly.
"So?" he asks.
Ianto looks back at him for a couple of seconds, then his gaze flicks past Owen, catching on something else.
"You'll see," he says. A flare of white light washes out his face. Owen turns and everything has changed.
He's alone, in a white, half-lit hallway he's never seen before. At the end of it is a door, sporting a chipped and faded Torchwood logo.
"What the fuck?" he mutters blankly as his mind takes a few seconds to catch up with events. The thing about having spent the last four years working for Torchwood, though, is that he really only needs a few seconds before he's able to start thinking again. He looks around him, taking in details and sorting them out. He has, not through any effort or fault of his own, changed locations instantaneously. The logo on the door seems to indicate that he's still in Torchwood, probably buried in one of the deep lower levels that hasn't been used for decades.
His hand is almost to his earpiece before he realizes - from Ianto's perspective, he must have simply disappeared, a good twenty seconds ago by now. Plenty of time to alert the others. But they haven't contacted him. Either something's interfering with the signal, or . . .
. . . or he works on top of a Rift in space and time.
"Fuck," Owen whispers, letting his hand drop. He tries out of habit to take a steadying breath, remembers that it doesn't really work like that for him anymore, and settles for quietly swearing again instead.
Fucking wonderful. He's going to have to find out, somehow, exactly when he is before he goes back up to the Hub. Standard Torchwood protocol, as well as being common fucking sense, and isn't it an exciting moment when those two mesh? He glances down at his hip before he remembers that he isn't armed, either. Even better. In an unknown area of Torchwood at an unknown point in time and he has no way to defend himself.
About the only positive in all this is that, if he does run into any staff, this is Torchwood. He won't have to waste time inventing a story to explain his presence.
On the other hand - this is Torchwood. Ianto's inflicted upon them all sorts of stories he's dug up about how things have been run here in the past. Owen may not get a chance to tell where he's from before he finds himself having to explain why being shot is more a permanent inconvenience than anything else.
Owen swears one last time, then starts walking cautiously toward the door. It seems like as good a place as any to start. As he draws closer, he can see in the poor light of the hallway that the room on the other side is fully lit. He stands at the door and listens carefully, but he hears nothing except the faint sounds of - medical equipment?
He forgets his nerves for a moment amidst curiosity. Why is someone who's ill enough to need monitoring hidden so far down in the complex? If the alarms go off, who could possibly get here in time, if anyone hears them at all?
There is no way the answer to that can be anything I want to know about, he thinks, but carefully eases the door open anyway.
The occupant is a sleeping woman, partially encased in metal, nightmarishly familiar. Owen stares, stunned, then hastily and quietly closes the door before she can wake up and see him.
"Oh, my god."
The voice is not his. Owen whips around to find a stark-white Ianto staring at him from the other end of the hall.
"'June seventeenth,'" Owen realizes aloud. "You bastard, you knew."
Then he remembers that there is a soon-to-be homicidal Cyberman less than ten feet away from him on the other side of the door, and he'd just as soon not wake her up. He starts down the hall toward Ianto, who is already talking.
"Owen - Owen, I can explain what you just saw -"
"Ianto."
"- It isn't what it looks like, she's not one of them -"
"Ianto."
" - her name is Lisa, Lisa Hallett, Owen, please, you can't tell Jack -"
"IANTO!" Owen barks. "Can I get a word in edgeways here?"
"I - of course, Owen, I'm sorry," Ianto says. The desperation in his voice irritates Owen further. Stupid fucking kid, he thinks, though whether it's because Ianto doesn't seem to have made any plans for his girlfriend's discovery other than grovelling, or because he brought her down here in the first place, Owen isn't sure.
"All right, Ianto," he says, in the clear and deliberate tones of addressing the slightly impaired, "let's just get this clear right off. I don't give a shit about your metal girlfriend, all right? I have much bigger problems. Do you understand?"
". . . all right. Yes," Ianto says carefully. His panicked expression smooths out, though he doesn't relax.
"Good. Now tell me, what is the date?"
"The - ?" Ianto looks at him blankly for a moment. Then his gaze sharpens and he starts really looking at Owen. Owen watches him take things in - the bandaged hand, the clothes that don't match whatever he saw Owen wearing earlier - and recants his previous exasperated assessment of Ianto's intelligence. He can actually see it all click into place behind Ianto's eyes.
"September twenty-third, 2008," Ianto says slowly. "Though I expect that's not the answer you want to hear."
"September 2008," Owen repeats incredulously.
"I'm afraid so."
"Nine months? I've gone back in time nine months? What's the fucking point of that?"
Ianto actually looks amused for half a second. "You would have preferred 1908?"
"At least that would make sense! Nine sodding months, that's just the Rift taking the piss!"
Ianto shrugs. "At least you're not stuck fifty years out from when you were born or something. Jack can probably even find a way to send you back."
"Jack - fuck! No. No, he can't find out." The hope ignited by Ianto's words is crushed almost immediately as Owen realizes what's likely to happen if Jack sees him up close enough to realize that he's - different now, and god, it would be nice to save himself like that, but he did the reading when he signed on. He knows better than to create a time paradox.
"Why not?" Ianto asks in surprise, and some wariness.
"There are things he can't know," Owen says simply, not quite successful at keeping the disappointment from his voice.
Ianto raises an eyebrow. "And I can?" he says, making no apparent effort to keep the skepticism from his.
Owen would like to think it won't come to that, but Ianto knows how to fit things together. Eventually, it will come to that. But that prospect doesn't send up the same warning flags in Owen's mind as does the thought of Jack finding him and working it out. "Yes," he says. "You are, in spite of all current evidence to the contrary" - he glances pointedly toward Lisa's door - "the sensible type. Jack - isn't." Which was putting it mildly sometimes.
Ianto nods in agreement, or at least understanding, with a promptness that forces Owen to stifle a sudden grin. He knows his Ianto is under no illusions about Jack, but he had assumed that development came about as a result of their esteemed leader's recent absence. He hadn't known it had started a bit earlier than that.
"You know a thing or two about keeping people hidden down here," Owen continues. "I can't risk going to Jack for help. I'm going to have to wait this out and I'll probably need every trick you know to do it." He looks Ianto in the eye. "And I know I can trust you not to ask questions I can't answer."
"Of course not," Ianto says, but he darts a longing glance toward Lisa's door. Owen thinks about the secrets he's going to have to keep, about some of the things he won't be able to save them all from, and begins to understand exactly how hard the next nine months are going to be.
**********
There's a wing full of furnished, if heavily dusty, bedrooms on the floor above Lisa; Ianto explains matter-of-factly that, once upon a time, Torchwood employees were "encouraged" to live on the premises, but that stopped back in 1963 when an alien virus wiped out almost the entire staff.
"I love our job," Owen says in response to this. Whatever Ianto's reply was going to be gets lost when he takes a breath to speak and immediately sneezes four times in a row.
"Perhaps," he says when he's finished, pulling out an immaculate handkerchief, "we should start cleaning up in here."
"Just bring down the stuff and I'll do it," Owen answers. He hates cleaning and he's so hopeless at it that Ianto will probably end up doing it himself anyway out of some uncontrollable neat freak urge, but if he's going to be stuck with Ianto as his only human contact for the better part of a year then he'd just as soon start things off on the right foot.
Ianto raises his eyebrows. "I think I know why you don't want Jack to find you. You've had a personality transplant, haven't you?"
Owen laughs, not without an edge to it. "Something like that."
Ianto slides him a look. "Best get things taken care of, then."
Ianto's efficient nature, which Owen has taken for granted more often than not in the past - or the future, or both, god, this is going to be nine straight months of headaches - is a godsend now. The room is an inhabitable space within two hours, with Ianto lasting an impressive twenty-five minutes before he takes the dustrag away from Owen. The CCTV cameras on this floor are disabled and the footage they'd already taken deleted, Ianto has solved more mundane problems like clothing and keeping clean, and he's even remembered that Owen will go mad with boredom without anything to occupy his attention.
"I'll bring you some books," Ianto says, "and I've got this." He presents Owen with a sleek laptop. In the back, plugged in where the power adaptor should go, is a small round piece of equipment, metallic green and about three centimeters across. Ianto taps it. "It's alien, came through the Rift about three years ago. It can hijack just about any signal within ten miles or so. You can use it to ring my mobile if you need to, watch telly, or download whatever sort of appalling pornography is no doubt to your taste."
Owen takes the laptop and grins. The Internet isn't exactly his idea of a social life, but it'll be better than relying solely on Ianto to keep him abreast of what's going on outside. "Ianto, you're brilliant."
Ianto smiles, pleased, but keeps going. "I believe I've worked something out for food storage -"
Owen winces. He can't believe he didn't see this coming. Ianto sees the expression and falls silent. Owen casts about for the least suspicious way to put it, then decides that there is no least suspicious way for a human being to explain that he won't need feeding any time soon and simply plunges on ahead.
"No need," he says. Ianto frowns.
"'No need'?"
"No need. Don't waste your time." He fixes Ianto with a serious look. "There are certain things you are going to have to trust me on, Ianto. This is one of them. And don't give me that Torchwood look, if I had any sort of nefarious plan, I'd bloody well pretend to be normal as possible, wouldn't I?"
Ianto keeps the look on him for another few seconds, but apparently can't find anything in his logic to object to, because he finally says, "Then if we're done here for now, I have other business to see to."
Owen nods. "Tell Lisa I said hi." Of course, he thinks. Ianto has no choice but to trust him for the time being. He won't want Jack poking around down here.
Which, if Owen is remembering correctly, gives him about three days to prove to Ianto that he can be trusted for the next nine months.
**********
In the end, winning Ianto's trust is so easy it's almost depressing.
Owen is sitting on the bed in his little hideaway, exploring the alien tech on the laptop to see how far he can push it and how well it covers its tracks, when he hears, very faintly, the sound of medical alarms rising through the floor. Doctor's instinct kicks in and he's on his feet and halfway down the hall to the stairs when he realizes - it's Lisa, of course.
It isn't that day, not yet. But should he really be getting involved? Shouldn't he just let it be, let things run their course?
But what happens if she dies ahead of schedule?
. . . what if now is when she was supposed to die and it was his interference that led to that disaster?
No, he thinks. What happened happened and if he spends the next nine months second-guessing his every step he will drive himself mad. Just make sure things happen now the way they happened before. Right now, that means seeing to it that Lisa doesn't die.
He hasn't stopped moving as the questions flash through his mind. He already knew on some level what his decision would be. He is a doctor, there is a patient who needs help, and no one else can get there in time. He wonders as he enters Lisa's room how Ianto has managed on his own for so long.
Lisa is lying quietly in her unit, her breathing even and steady. Owen's own mental alarms go off. There's no way she's completely unresponsive, not when she's going to be up and committing murder in two days' time. He approaches cautiously, tense and ready to run if he has to, but she doesn't move.
It only takes about thirty seconds to find the problem once he's close enough to take a good look. Some of the wiring hooking her up to the machinery has been knocked loose. Owen fixes it and the alarm falls silent.
He takes a slow step back and looks at her face, so still and serene he can't tell if she's faking or not. She's given no sign of being aware of his presence. She must be, though; that wiring can't have come loose on its own. Not about to give herself away, he thinks, and wonders exactly how long she's had Ianto fooled.
She probably thinks he is Ianto. He'd be wise to leave before she changes her mind on that count.
Owen slips out of the room. At least he knows he hasn't changed anything. Lisa was never in any danger. Only someone without formal medical training, someone gone half-mad with grief and desperation, would believe her to be as ill as she's making herself out to be. She hasn't survived in spite of Ianto's inexperience - she's thrived because of it.
That had been his theory when this first happened, the only explanation he could come up with as to how the hell she could have possibly lived in this little room for over a year with only a secretary to attend to her needs. He is, even in the grimness of the situation, pleased to find that he was right.
He hears footsteps on the stairs just as he's closing the door, and tenses in panic for a few agonizing seconds before Ianto emerges into the hallway. He pulls up short when he sees Owen, eyes flicking toward Owen's hand, and lets out a long exhale when he sees the bandages.
"For just a second I thought -" he begins.
"Yeah, me too," Owen says. "I was wondering how the fuck I was going to explain this one." Yes, Jack, I am a walking corpse from the future, but no, the half-converted cyberman does not belong to me. That'd go over well.
"Is Lisa all right?" Ianto asks, moving toward him and the door.
"Yeah. She's fine." He gives Ianto a reassuring smile, thinking fast. Can't have Ianto getting suspicious now. But then, this can't be the first time this has happened, either, and if there's one thing Ianto excels at when it comes to Lisa, it's denial. He settles on the truth. Easier to remember later. "Loose wires is all. I've seen better equipment. How'd you know to come down, anyway?" he asks. A minor subject change wouldn't hurt, just in case.
Ianto digs into his pocket and pulls out his mobile, holding it up. "I've got it wired to go off when the alarms do. Lisa told me how."
"She conscious often?" Owen asks casually.
"Off and on. More on than off lately." Ianto smiles, a bright, open expression that makes him look as young as he really is. Owen's not sure he's ever seen Ianto look happy in quite this way. He's a bit taken aback by the novelty of seeing such an uncomplicated look on Ianto's face and almost misses what Ianto says next.
"Thank you, Owen."
He wasn't expecting that, and fumbles a little. "Oh. Not a problem. I mean, 'smy job."
Ianto steps closer, looking at him seriously now. "Taking care of Lisa is my job right now." He pauses. His eyes search Owen's face for something - a hint of times beyond "right now," Owen thinks. He puts a hand on Ianto's shoulder to distract his attention.
"Stop that," he says gently. Ianto flushes faintly, dropping his gaze.
"I know," he says, "I don't mean to - and I won't ask. It's just so hard not to wonder." He looks up with a small smile. "And good to know that you'll run to her side if she needs you."
It takes everything Owen's got not to flinch at the hope in Ianto's eyes. Fuck. He drops his hand and says,
"I'm a doctor. I heard the alarms. It's instinct. Now," he continues, making his tone a bit more brisk, "I've got a patient in there who's probably asleep, but might like a visit anyway if you've got time to spare before you're missed." He gives Ianto a smile and steps aside.
Ianto smiles back, another of the simple, joyful smiles Owen has never seen before and knows he won't ever see again. "Thank you, Owen."
Owen nods and turns toward the stairs before his own smile can start looking too strained. It shouldn't be possible, but he feels sick.
**********
Two days later, Ianto stops by briefly in the early morning.
"I've got a visitor coming in to see Lisa," he says, eyes shining with excitement, "so if you hear extra noise downstairs, don't worry, it's just us."
"All right," Owen says. He makes himself wait until he's sure Ianto is on the stairs before he gets up and locks his door.
The entire day passes, shredding away at his nerves, before he finally hears Tanizaki's screams rising through the floor. Owen gets up slowly and slides under his bed, just in case. He looks at his watch and waits.
**********
Owen came in with the worst hangover he'd had in years, from trying to drink Katie away, trying to drown thoughts of how far he would have gone to save her if he'd had the chance. It hadn't worked.
And now this.
"Tanizaki doesn't need an autopsy, Jack, we already know what he died of."
"Do the autopsy, Owen. Ianto will be bearing witness."
"It's an autopsy, not a wedding, I don't need a witness. And you're not fooling anyone, least of all me. Whyn't you just cut to the chase and thrash him with your belt? I'll even hold him down if you're so bloody keen to have me involved."
"Owen, I'm going to thrash you with my belt in a minute if you don't do what you're damn well told."
So he did the autopsy, or started to, but after half an hour of Ianto's silent, shellshocked presence wearing on his nerves (anythingiwouldhavedoneanything) he threw down his scalpel and snarled into the microphone,
"And it turns out he died of a great fucking piece of metal lodged in his skull, what a surprise, and if you ever even think of pulling a stunt like this again, Jack, you can go fuck yourself." He ripped off his gloves, threw them next to the scalpel, and stalked out of the autopsy room.
"I'm going out!" he yelled. "Someone ring me if any real medical work needs doing!"
Jack never said anything to him about it, and if he'd opted to punish Ianto any further after that, he'd done so in private.
**********
It turns out hiding was unnecessary. Owen can hear some of the goings-on downstairs drifting up through the floor, but he never hears anything in the hall outside his door. Eventually, when things have gone quiet, he pulls himself out from under the bed and sits on the edge of it. The thought of just staying here is unexpectedly maddening. He knows what's happened and what is probably still playing out in the Hub, but the urge to check it's all going the way it's meant to is strong.
That's completely out of the question, though, so Owen picks up the laptop to try and distract himself. He's still failing utterly at being distracted some time later when there's a knock at his door.
"Owen?" Ianto's voice is rough and hoarse, but composed. Owen stares at the door in surprise; he'd expected Ianto to be a bit too busy to come see him, tonight as well as for the next few days. He wonders briefly if Jack might be standing out there, too, having pulled the confession of Owen's presence out of a drained and stunned Ianto - but, no. No, even unstable as he is right now, Ianto can be counted on to have kept quiet, if only because continuing to keep a secret from Jack would appeal as some level of vengeance for Lisa. Owen gets up, unlocks, and opens the door.
Ianto looks even worse than he remembers from that night - from this night. His suit is covered in blood, face streaked with grime and tears. His expression collapses in relief under the tear tracks when he sees Owen.
"Thank god," he breathes. He reaches out and puts a hand on Owen's arm. Owen glances down and sees Ianto's knuckles going white from the force of his grip. Probably leaving a bruise, not that it really matters.
"Come on, come inside, we'll shut the door," he says. Just in case Jack comes looking. Ianto lets Owen draw him into the room, still holding his arm, saying,
"I didn't - I didn't know if she'd come through here, I didn't have a chance to check, I didn't know if you -"
"It's all right, mate," Owen soothes, forcing himself to meet Ianto's desperate gaze. Little wonder he'd run tonight, nine months ago, the moment he could. He'd seen that look in the mirror for a long time after Katie died. Even now, with everything that's happened to force him to finally accept her loss, looking into Ianto's eyes and facing that pain is the last thing he wants to do. He does it, though, because nine months ago no one else did and Owen can't leave him alone in this, no matter how badly Ianto may have fucked up. "I'm right here, see? I'm fine. She didn't even come anywhere near here."
"Oh, god, Owen," Ianto says brokenly. Owen waits for it, for Ianto to continue with, You knew and you didn't tell me, but Ianto's face crumples and Owen sees that that level of thinking and making connections is beyond Ianto's reach right now. No doubt that conversation will come later, but for the moment Owen has a different problem. He puts his hands on Ianto's shoulder and says, not ungently,
"None of that, Ianto. Come on. No time for that. How long d'you think you've got before Jack comes to check up on you?" He sees the flash in Ianto's eyes at the sound of Jack's name and seizes on it, sharpening his voice a bit. "That's right, keep it together. Don't give that bastard the fucking satisfaction."
Ianto takes a deep breath, his mouth hardening into a thin line. Owen drops his hands and glances away for a few seconds to give Ianto space to compose himself. Ianto lets go of his arm.
"Right. I just. Needed to make sure you were all right. I should go - I have to get Tanizaki into the lift and bring him upstairs."
Of course. Of course Jack is making him do that. And then tomorrow, that stunt with the autopsy . . . and, Owen realizes, undoubtedly leaving Ianto to clear up the mess Owen will storm out on.
Funny, how the last few months have changed his perspective of this night. Of Jack.
"All right," he says impulsively, "I'll help." Ianto shakes his head.
"Better not. He might come down."
Owen suspects Jack probably won't - all the better for letting Ianto steep in the atrocities he helped to happen, after all - but he nods anyway.
"Yeah. Better keep clear for a few days," he added. "He'll be watching where you go."
Ianto's expression tightens further. "Yes," he says. "I'll come back when I can." He turns to the door and grabs the handle, then pauses and turns back. "I'm glad you're all right," he tells Owen, then leaves before Owen can reply. Not that he'd know what to say.
**********
Owen's never been very good at patience. Or at waiting. He's beginning to settle in down here, to see exactly what his routine is going to look like for months, and he thinks he might break his teeth from grinding them in frustration. This is nothing but waiting. Waiting for the next big thing to happen, as a way of marking the time. Waiting for Ianto's next visit (six days and counting since Lisa). Waiting for time to come back round so he can join the world again.
And to add insult to injury, he can't even do half the things that would help pass the time a bit faster and keep him sane. He can't sleep, so he's awake for every sodding second of every sodding day. He can't drink, which would have been an excellent way to make this ordeal go by in a garbled flash. He can't even have a wank.
He reads every book Ianto brought down, even the boring ones, and it's Ianto who picked them so most of them are boring. He spends so much time on the laptop that he thinks he will have managed to view the entire Internet before this is all over. He works on a technique he was trying out before, a sort of meditation that would at least let him shut his mind down for a while. That one was Tosh's idea. When he'd objected, since meditation was for Buddhists and hippies, she'd said reasonably, "You may not physically require sleep, but no one can survive - mentally, I mean - being on all the time." He'd given in, because that did make sense, and because he owed it to Tosh to listen to her every now and then.
He's getting better at it, sort of, and he does get some mileage out of imagining how she'll smile when he tells her in nine months how her Buddhist hippy nonsense saved his sanity. He'll likely have perfected it beyond her wildest dreams by then.
He's half-sunk into it when there finally comes a knock on the door. He blinks to refocus himself, then gets up and opens the door to let Ianto in.
Ianto steps in past him, saying, "You might want to check who it is before you just open the door."
Owen snorts. "Ianto, if anyone else finds out there's a reason to come down to this particular room, I don't think they'll bother knocking."
Ianto concedes the point with a nod. "I'm sorry it's been so long. It's been - difficult to get a moment to myself." He doesn't quite meet Owen's eyes when he says that, but looks back up as he continues, "Have you been all right down here?"
"Fantastic," Owen says. "This is going to be the best nine months ever."
An uncertain frown flickers across Ianto's face, and Owen reminds himself that Ianto's sarcasm detector probably isn't up to snuff at the moment. "I'm fine," he corrects himself quickly. "It's been fine. Not very exciting, but thanks to you I've at least got enough to do to keep myself halfway sane."
It's the right thing to say - Ianto smiles. Not the bright smile of a week and a half ago - it's thin and subdued, looking more like the kinds of smiles he's used to seeing on Ianto - but it still counts. Owen smiles back.
"That's good," Ianto says, then falls silent. The smile disappears, but he keeps looking at Owen. Here it is, Owen thinks, now's the conversation he was expecting before. He doesn't want to have it any more than he did then, but he can't put it off, either. It doesn't seem fair to make Ianto ask, so Owen says,
"You know I couldn't tell you." That's the sum of his argument, so he stops there, folding his arms across his chest and uncomfortably returning Ianto's look. Ianto's face went blank the second Owen opened his mouth to speak; his tone is equally featureless as he answers,
"I know."
And that's just unfair, it really fucking is, worse than an argument. Owen knows it's not okay with Ianto, because how could it be, if someone had known what would happen to Katie and not said word one Owen would not have been fucking okay with that and he would have let them know about it, loudly and violently. If Ianto had a go at him, he could handle that. But instead he's just standing there, looking at Owen, totally closed down, so Owen keeps talking.
"I'd have said if I could. I would have. Hell, I'd write you a fucking list for the next few months if I could. But -"
"Time paradox," Ianto interrupts. "Owen, I know." The stress on the last two words is sharp enough to stop Owen talking and make him take a closer look at Ianto. He looks - tense round the edges all of a sudden, a veiled hardness in his eyes and a faint line between his eyebrows.
"All right," Owen says, forcing himself to back off. "I just - I'm sorry. That's all. I remember it all and I'm sorry."
Ianto closes his eyes hard. "Thank you," he says, just above a whisper. Owen hesitates, then, not sure which of them he's doing it for, he says briskly,
"Right, now that's settled." He goes over to the semi-organized stack of books and holds a couple of them up, saying, "Overall, I'm afraid your taste in books is rubbish, but these two were good, so if you're taking requests . . ." He keeps talking, not quite watching as Ianto's face clears and the tension smooths away. By the time Owen's done, Ianto looks completely bland and neutral once more, and Owen thinks that Ianto's much better at barely keeping it together than he ever was. He turns to put the books back down, thinking that maybe he'll tell Ianto about Katie one of these days.
Then he sees his shadow on the wall, black and sharply defined when it wasn't even there a moment ago, and says, "Oh, fucking wonderful."
When he turns back round, he is so surprised to see Ianto there still - or again, whatever - that he doesn't immediately take in the change in their surroundings. Ianto looks completely different to how he did ten comparative seconds ago, his expression mirroring Owen's surprise.
"Now what's the date?" Owen asks, wincing at the plaintive tone to his voice. But honest to god, if the Rift's decided to make a career of bouncing him around -
"June seventeenth," Ianto says. "You've been gone about fifteen seconds."
Owen absorbs this in silence for a moment, trying to get his mind up to speed with the sudden shift from that Ianto to this. "How tidy."
"It wasn't quite what I expected," Ianto agrees. He speaks quietly, catching Owen's attention; Owen takes a closer look at him and sees, for the first time, that nine months isn't very long at all. The change between that Ianto and this isn't as dramatic as he's had them all believing.
"Ianto -" he begins, but he's interrupted as Ianto tilts his head slightly in a familiar gesture, putting his hand to his earpiece.
". . . No, we're fine . . . understood, sir." He looks at Owen. "They've noticed the Rift activity. We're wanted upstairs."
"'Course we are," Owen says. "God forbid I get five minutes to get my bearings." He's not sure whether it's lingering paranoia, or maybe something else that brought itself to his attention in the last week and a half, but Jack is the last person he wants to talk to right now.
"Don't let me punch him," he continues, holding up his bandaged hand. "I can't afford to do any more damage than I already have."
"I'll do my best," Ianto says, then hesitates. "I know you'll have just come from being on the other end of this conversation, but -" He reaches out and takes Owen's hand in his, running his fingertips over the bandages. "I am sorry."
"I know," Owen says, meeting his eyes. "So am I."
"I know." Ianto lets go of his hand. Owen lets it drop.
"So let's go get this over with," he says. "Then -" He pauses for a long moment. "Then there's someone I want to tell you about."
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♥
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it fitted their relationship perfectly and I love the idea of Owen being able to set Ianto's mind at rest, just a little about Lisa.
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Also: extra credit points for the appropriately creepy icon. Damn.
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And I've stayed up far, far too long reading it for someone who's got to open at her store in the morning. :D
(This is evening_rose over on JF, btw!)
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Of all my fic-length TW fics (which isn't as impressive as it sounds, there aren't that many) only one of them is not Owen-centric. And that one is still unfit for general consumption, even though I finished it before I finished this one. Owen is my "in" character for Torchwood.
Thanks for swinging by! Not bad for a dead fandom, huh? ;)
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And, yeah, I'm a fan of anything that infuriates Jack. XD Thanks for commenting!
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Yes, the tendency of fandom in general to buy into the myth of Jack The Nice Guy drives me crazy. I do not like Jack very much, but I do like to write him because he is such a fascinating character, and part of that fascination comes from him being a very damaged individual who is a right bastard. When people strip that away, it makes him boring, and I think every last one of us can agree that Jack should never be boring.
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And don't even get me started on Owen in either series, or we will be here all day.
- so, yeah. Part of it is the flaws in canon being reflected in fandom - bad writing begetting bad writing. And it is a crying shame because Jack could be one of the most wonderfully fascinating characters on television, but the writers just won't or can't go there.
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Second, this is just brilliant. I was lamenting the other day that I couldn't wait for the new series to start up so I'd get some original fanfic, since all the recent fanfic is mostly just rehashing all other fanfic. There's only so much that can be done between series, and I feel that its mostly been done. So, this? Just brilliant. You've got time paradoxes and some good Ianto-angst and it deals with Cyberwoman issues and zombie!Owen issues. I loved it.
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As for the fic itself, thank you! I think it helps that the idea was born before series two was even over, when it was easier to have fresher ideas. There were a lot of things I wanted to do with this that I didn't end up doing, but I think I'm happy with what I've got in here. There isn't a lot of stuff dealing with Owen and Ianto's relationship, or the fact that the revelation about Katie means that they've got more in common than we would have thought, and I'm also interested in the likelihood that Ianto was not permitted to grieve openly for Lisa. This fic discusses or implies a lot of things that have been on my mind for both these characters, and I suppose it's my way of giving them a chance to help each other.
. . . anyway. Sometimes I babble. XD Thanks again! I shall friend you back.
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Thank you for writing this. It was a real joy.
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The two major difficulties I had with it:
* Figuring out where the hell the ending was. ("Fragments" gave me the answer, but apparently I needed to gain way more distance before I could see that.) I cannot even tell you how many times I changed my mind on that. And I didn't even realize a few days ago where it really was.
* Ianto. Writing Ianto is really hard for me. Your specific comments on him here delight me, because god I put a ton of work into figuring him out.
I'm so happy I was able to eventually get it into shape - I never entirely gave up hope, but it had been a long time since I'd been able to get anything done on it; most of this was actually written months ago - and I'm really pleased you liked it. I wrote it for you just as much as for me.
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Ahem. I love how you get so much pathos out of a Rift-stupidly-small timejump, and how much you expand on the characters when most of the 'action' action happens off-stage. So good.
Also I think I like your Owen loads better than show!Owen. Loads.
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I love writing Owen. :D I think I tend to go more with Burn Gorman's portrayal/how Owen would respond to things if the writing didn't suck than, you know, the writing of Owen that sucks. Iiif that makes any sense.
And frankly, the only way to get anything involving "Cyberwoman" to not suck is to KEEP it offstage. My GOD what a horrible episode. It ended up giving me a lot to work with for this, though.
Thank you! :D
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I did originally plan for this to be longer, and kept going back and forth on when to have Owen end up back in the right spot in his timeline. I hadn't planned to go as far as "Exit Wounds," though that would certainly be an interesting approach to a fix-it!
Thanks so much for commenting. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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And I can't help but notice is there hints of Ianto/Owen in this? =0 If so, I love it! I never really considered them before, but I like the idea of them =3
Again, great job with this! On both Ianto and Owen.
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There are indeed! I had originally intended for this to be much longer, and ultimately become Ianto/Owen. It decided to be genfic instead, but, being Torchwood genfic, hints of the pairing still lingered.
I love this comment because I had a really, really hard time getting this fic finished, and you've picked up on all the reasons why I stuck with it. I was too invested in the character stuff to give up! Thanks so much for commenting, especially on an older piece like this - it's fun to get the occasional reminder that people are still enjoying them.