Torchwood fic: 99:00 Gwen/Ianto R
Apr. 21st, 2010 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
51stcenturyfoxwritten for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dark_fest
Title: 99:00
Author![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
51stcenturyfox
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Gwen/Ianto (+ canon pairings)
Rating: R
Length: ~10,500 words
Warnings: References to suicide
Prompt: Ianto and Gwen - caught in the Hub together when Tosh's time lock traps the Dalek. What if it never releases them?
Summary: The more things stay the same, the more they change.
Notes: Beta credit and thank you's go tocopperbadge and neifile7
Pushing a hand (and then punching a fist) against the shimmering wall between them and their attacker did nothing. Neither did throwing their bodies at it, or a metal chair; over and over, the chair simply plunged into the shield's surface and stuck. They pulled it out for further attempts but the surface hardened, and finally, the chair bounced off and clattered to the floor, losing a wheel and the backrest and they gave up.
Half the Hub was on the other side of the time lock: the archives, the sub-etheric resonator, and the exits. The phones wouldn't dial out and the internet was a wash; the browsers simply timed out and email wouldn't send -- it merely threw the same error, over and over. It didn't stop them from trying.
Still, the ventilation was good, the water and electricity flowed and Ianto said there was a store of supplies for emergencies. Surely this would be sorted in no time.
provisions
"Guess it's not hours then, or days. Or weeks." Ianto gestured at the frozen counter, on the ninth day.
"It could be broken."
"It's Toshnology, Gwen."
"True, but made of alien bits and bobs too, right?" Gwen leaned back on the sofa and brushed the hair from her eyes. "It hadn't been real-world tested at all, as far as we know."
The time lock was meant to enclose the entire Hub, but had isolated them from the threat when activated. Since the attacker, the what-was-it? Oh right, the Dalek, was in the Hub, the time lock cordon had been apparently tossed up inside based on intruder detection.
There were stacks and stacks of supplies (Gwen cheered at the sight of loo roll) and foodstuffs on one of the accessible sublevels; American Meals-Ready-to-Eat -- field rations. U.S Government Property, said the printing on the thick olive-drab plastic. Gwen was first surprised they weren't British rations and then again surprised they weren't stamped with the Torchwood T like nearly everything else in the Hub.
"They call them Meals Rejected by the Enemy,'" Ianto said, and Gwen grinned as she squeezed a bit of peanut butter onto his cracker.
"They're not that bad, though," she noted gamely as he stuffed it into his mouth. Between the heavy plastic packets with little heaters in them and the tinned fruit and veg, they had enough food to last them for a few decades. Team meals times six and five years worth of sealed rations for each. The 21st century is when it all changes, Jack had said. She guessed he'd preparing for something quite possibly very dire indeed. "So you knew about this stockpile? What did you think of it?"
"I... thought it was an excessive amount of Meals in Plastic Bags."
"Well, I'm grateful for excessive." She glanced at the bullets, still suspended in midair between them and the Dalek. She wondered if it could see them, if it was trapped in time as well.
The apple sitting on her desk hadn't even begun to soften, let alone rot, so the food apparently wouldn't spoil either, no matter how long they were here. Gwen pressed that thought way, way down, into the little ball of worry which sat inside her like the Cajun Rice w/ Sausage and Cheddar Cheese Pretzels.
work
The code base was inaccessible; some kind of fail-safe. If Toshiko had been here, there might have been a way to disable the shield, but that couldn't be helped. They made numerous password attempts, but everything they tried resulted in an Access Denied error.
"We could do the dictionary," Gwen suggested. "Set up a program to try every word. I mean, we could try-"
"Do you think Tosh would have used a dictionary word? It's probably Pi to 99 characters with zeroes and ones randomly thrown in," Ianto grumbled.
"Yeah. Probably."
They tried to play cards, but it wasn't distracting enough; you could still dwell on other things when you played cards, and Gwen complained that Ianto won far too often. Ianto settled on a routine of computer games --"Oi, could you put on the headphones? That music is driving me-" "Oh, right, sorry." "No worries, tea?"-- and Gwen had begun to poke her way through Jack's lighter novels. They both dismissed the Complete Works of Shakespeare and War and Peace.
They'd worked for the first three weeks, clearing a backlog of paperwork. The routine was comforting, in a way. Gwen thought it was probably healthy, too -- she'd read books on incarceration and though this wasn't that exactly, there were things that happened to people's minds when they were locked up. She dismissed the bits she'd recalled about PTSD from dealing with aggressive cellies and surprise searches by guards and convinced Ianto to stop marking ticks on the whiteboard, one per day. He rubbed the Sharpie-markered lines off with a flourish.
"Better?"
"It just felt creepy, like we actually are in a prison," she pointed out. "Or a dungeon."
"What? These luxurious accommodations?" He hoisted the metal bin and made for the incinerator.
"We're lucky we can burn the rubbish!" she called out. "We could be living a nest of rats."
"Mmm, rats," Ianto answered, over his shoulder.
He'd already pointed out that his watch was analog, and the movement displayed date as well as time. It was... handy. Sometimes he'd start and she'd look up. "It's two in the morning."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Right," she'd say, and he'd make for Jack's cubbyhole. It was weird how the lack of sunlight and structured days made a person lose track of the hour.
They'd tried structure, but there wasn't much else to do in the way of work without the ability to sort through artefacts and archives, and the Rift monitor was silent, so they stopped feeling guilty about skiving off. One night, they sat at the boardroom table over tuna and noodles and watched DVDs on the flatscreen.
"Independence Day?"
"Ha ha, Ianto. And by that I mean 'Ha. No'."
"Mars Attacks?" he suggested.
"Still not funny."
"My sense of humour is a dark one."
"I'd noticed that. Before."
tick-tock
"Ianto!" Gwen called out on the afternoon of the thirty-third day. He came to her side and followed her wavering finger. "Look!"
"Ninety-eight."
"Yeah. It must have... it must have changed."
"I don't know when it did. Haven't looked at it all week."
"Hmm." Ianto stroked his chin.
"Maybe, well. Could it have changed with the month?"
"If so, the time lock was apparently defaulted to 99 months." Ianto's eyes met hers. "Any... ideas?"
"Could be worse. Could be 99 years."
"Oh, there's a reassuring thought."
"Still, light at the end of the tunnel, right?"
"That's eight years, Gwen."
Gwen paused, then tapped on her mobile, charged daily without fail to serve as a portable alarm clock, though it wouldn't dial out. "Calculator says it's eight years point-two-five. So eight years, three months, give or take a day."
Ianto crooked an ankle into one of the chairs and sat, folding his arms. "Look. It's just been over a month, right? That's- that's nothing. Jack will figure it out."
"'Course he will, sweetheart," Gwen said, sounding entirely unconvinced.
"Or the Doctor."
"Now, that's more likely. Could we dig out, you think?"
"Like in Shawshank Redemption?" Ianto shook his head. The walls were several feet thick with nothing but sandy soil on the other side; they were too close to the water. The sandy material of the substrate would just flow into any opening they'd manage to create. They'd already discussed it. They'd discussed everything they could come up with.
"Well, we've got some tools, and apparently plenty of time-"
"It won't work. It could take 30 years. And what's out there, anyway?" Ianto gestured at the only accessible CCTV feed, showing the Plass, empty except for the outstretched arm of the newsagent at his stand, frozen, just after he'd cut a free the string from a stack of newspapers. Even though the earth itself had moved, he still had to make a living, didn't he?
They didn't know, couldn't know, if he was frozen in time, or the feed was stuck on that frame here in the Hub. Both preferred to think it was the feed.
everything changes
"Fifty-eight days," Gwen muttered over coffee. They were down to cans of the stuff which Ianto clearly hadn't picked out. Still, there was a lot of it, and it was caffeinated, thank stars.
"Yup."
"You know, I haven't... " she coughed. "This is too much information, and I apologise in advance for saying, but it might be important. I haven't um, had my cycle come 'round."
Ianto knitted his brows, confused.
"My female cycle."
"Oh. Right. Maybe it's the stress. That happens, doesn't it? In boot camp and wars and situations like that?"
"Maybe. Yeah, but we're not training for the Olympics, either. Maybe we're not changing in any way." Gwen paused. "Aging or anything. I mean, I don't mind that our hair isn't growing - saves effort trimming my fringe, or shaving, yeah? But it can't just be down to stress. We're not changing at all, are we?"
"Not physically, as far as I can tell. We might be a bit mental and stir-crazy by the time Jack gets us out of here, though."
"We're mental and stir-crazy now."
"Point."
wardrobe
Ianto dropped them silently on Gwen's lap. Four white t-shirts. She glanced down and then up at his face.
"These are Jack's," he said, simply. They'd been re-washing their own gear every few days, though Ianto had traded his dry-clean-only suit for a pair of jeans and a plain blue jumper he'd kept in his locker for weevil hunting after a week, but Gwen thought he'd looked very... uncomfortable dressed in things designed to be comfortable. In his other hand, Ianto held a clutch of clothes hangers. He waved them. "I'm going to start wearing his shirts and trousers. Do you want any of these?"
"No, I'm fine." Gwen had found a stack of clean scrubs in the Medbay. Too small for Ianto, but they worked a treat for her. And they had the washer, so there was plenty to wear. "But thanks for the t-shirts."
missives
Gwen flicked her fingernails against the edges of her thick spiral notebook, the one she'd written case notes in when she'd first come to Torchwood and lost in the bottom of her desk drawer. Argolin: Green. Aggro. Smell a bit like Stilton cheese.
She'd write another letter to Rhys tonight, once she was settled in on the grotty sofa -- her bed --for the night with the afghan tucked in under her elbows. This was another thing she did every day. Frankly, she was running out of things to write: Still TRAPPED! WISH YOU WERE HERE! ONLY NOT! BECAUSE WE'RE TRAPPED IN THE FUCKING HUB.
Day 88.
Today Ianto and I cleaned the breakroom again. It was dusty. It's not like we really cook in there. I'm running out of things to read so maybe I should write a book. Ianto could too, and we could read each other's novels. That would be thrilling, no doubt. I think his would be an international spy caper and mine would be a holiday romance. The sort you take to the beach and dog-ear and get sand in but don't mind because you're slightly embarrassed to be seen reading it anyway. There are too many books about holiday romances in Tuscany and Provence already, though. Couple meet, start planting olive trees or build a vineyard, have mishaps, end up happy and successful and brilliant. Could set it in Swansea, but that's not exactly glamourous, is it?
Confession: I've already started writing it and I crossed out "Tuscany". Hmm. Bears thought.
Not sure I have a whole book in me, Rhys. I could write my memoirs but I hate memoirs by people who aren't old. Because then what do they do later? Write another one. It's a ploy to sell the same book all over again, isn't it? "Updated with over 300 pages of new material!" People are so gullible.
Hopefully this isn't the end and there will be more to tell. Hopefully you'll see these notes one day, no matter what happens to us, and realise how much I love you.
personnel matters
They'd had this conversation before, too many times to count:
"It was five years, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Gwen answered. "With Hart. That arsehole. You think the two-week time loop thing was like this?"
"Might have been." Ianto brushed nonexistent dust from his trousers. He glanced up at the CCTV, still showing the newsagent on the Plass, his hand gesturing in midair, and it had to be the CCTV frozen there, please let it be. "So, you still think Jack will figure this out before the 99 months... I mean, his strap-"
"I never really thought he'd be able to- it apparently didn't help him when he was stranded before. He'd have had it then, right?"
"Yeah. Maybe. But-"
"Maybe they don't know. Maybe they've just assumed we're dead." Gwen pushed aside her Jules Verne. "They've probably had our funerals, Ianto. Jack's likely looking to replace us if he hasn't already."
"God." Ianto fumbled with his pen, nearly dropped it, and instead plunked it down onto Tosh's slightly-tilted desk.
"Not. No, I don't mean like that. Just... you know, in terms of staffing." Gwen stopped the pen rolling off the edge with one finger and handed it to him. "But do you think..." she trailed off. "When do you think they'll move on? Well, I mean eventually, but yeah, if Rhys thinks I'm dead? If Jack thinks you are?"
"I don't know, Gwen."
"It's like he's gone, not me."
"You're right here."
"Maybe we're dead."
"What?"
"Limbo?"
"No, there's nothing," Ianto said. "There's nothing after you die."
"Jack says there's nothing. But he doesn't know."
"Gwen, he's died scores of times."
"Maybe his deaths aren't like... normal deaths. Really final, you know? Maybe there's a kind of tether keeping him here and bringing him back again and again. Maybe one day he'll finally be at peace."
Ianto was silent. He looked away for a moment. "Maybe we're tethered too. We're ghosts," he said, putting on a wavering tone, "ghosts who are haaaaunting the Hub. And Jack is shitting himself because that pen didn't fall to the floor and you're got his novels out of order."
"Yeah, right."
night terror
Gwen's bare feet slapped on the cold concrete floor as she ran for Jack's office. By some sort of unspoken code, Ianto kept the hatch door in the floor open when he slept, just like they always made sure to say if one of them would be in another accessible part of the Hub for a while. A faint light beamed upward. "Ianto?" Gwen called, kneeling at the edge of the hole in the floor. She leaned forward and peeked down, but Ianto was asleep, stretched out on Jack's camp bed, an aged paperback book facedown beside him on the blue-grey blanket, his thumb tucked inside.
"Ianto?" she called again, softly, but he didn't stir. She sat back on her heels but stayed there for a while, watching his chest rise and fall, before her knees got too cold and she slowly stood and walked back to the sofa. She put a light on and tried to sleep, but the familiar hum of the Hub wasn't that comforting.
"We're not ghosts," she said, to no one. "We're not."
the box
"Look," Ianto said, hefting the box onto the conference table. "I don't want you to flip out, but I have a plan."
"A plan?" Gwen quirked a brow and spread her hands out flat on the table's surface. She poked at the cool metal of the box with her thumbs. "Another? Are we up to what, Plan F?"
"We keep stuff in here. Letters, notes, files. Whatever we document over the course of the time lock. It's lead-lined and fireproof."
"Why? What for?"
"It's an archive. In case we don't make it." Ianto slid a thumb drive across the table and Gwen caught it before it plummeted to her lap. "Here, have a stupid stick. We've got a ton of them."
She peered at it; it was tagged with her name. "Have you been keeping a diary?"
"Yes. We can do video, too. I think we have a responsibility to document this. What if mainframe doesn't hold any data? What if we don't make it?" Ianto repeated.
"If we don't make it, Jack will remember us," Gwen murmured, as she felt the edge of the thumb drive bite into her palm, click against her wedding ring. "He can't die, and he won't forget us."
"Maybe," Ianto allowed. He turned the box around and showed her their names, stenciled on. When Gwen traced her first initial, she found the paint still tacky.
communication
"Do you have a Facebook?" Gwen asked.
"God, no."
"You've seen it though, right?"
"Yeah. I didn't see the point. Why would I want to talk to people I went to school with? Pack of rotters."
"You can make it private."
"Well, then what's the point?"
"No, I mean, just add your friends."
Ianto raised an eyebrow. "So that'd be... you and Jack then. Andy? Kathy?" He laughed. "You have one?"
"I do. I don't do anything with it, though. What would I put on the status line: 'Iced another Hoix today. They're right bastards but if you shoot them square in the face they really drop fast?' Anyway, Rhys got one and talked me into it."
"I didn't know Rhys did social networking."
"He talks to his mates and plays pirate... mafia or something."
Ianto nodded and then shook his head. "I have no idea what that is. It must be nice, though, to have mates outside work. No offence," he added with a grin, when Gwen mock-punched his arm. "God, we would have the most boring Facebooks ever."
"It'll be obsolete when we get out of here. There'll be some other big new thing." Ianto picked up a bag of M&Ms and Gwen examined the ragged edge of her thumbnail. "Rhys talks to his old sweetheart on it."
"Gwen, I'm sure it's nothing."
"No, I know. It's just. He'd been chatting and when I came home late once, I think it was that time we were tracking those bear things, remember? Well, the chat screen was left up. I didn't say a word, just shut down the PC."
Ianto nodded and held out the packet of candies, shook a few into Gwen's hand.
"She's divorced, Patricia. I think he must have... I think he left it there so I'd see it and feel bad, you know? Coming in at all hours. Like 'see here, Gwen'."
"Did you ask him about it?"
"No. Maybe I had it coming." Ianto offered her the rest of the bag, but she shook her head. "Have it coming. And now we're dead to them, so."
"But it takes years to be considered legally dead, right?"
She sighed. "Yeah. Sort of."
talent
"Ianto, what's your special skill?"
"My what?"
"Your special skill. Can you whistle symphonies or touch the tip of your nose with your tongue or... everyone has some skill like that." Gwen turned on the sofa and sat with her legs tucked under her, facing him.
"Counting cards."
"You! You... fucker!" Gwen put on a stern face but dissolved into laughter.
"What about you?"
"My special skill?" Gwen produced a 10p coin from her pocket and made a loose fist, then centred the disk on the knuckle of her index joint. Rolling her fingers, she flipped it knuckle-to-knuckle and back again.
"Show-off. You only brought this skills thing up so you should show me that."
"I'll teach you how."
"All right then," Ianto said, mollified.
nature
"Harvest!" Gwen placed a handful of strawberries on Ianto's desk and produced a slightly green tomato.
"Oh my god!" He stared at her, then plucked a berry from the napkin and popped it into his mouth, then grinned in ecstasy. "Fresh fruit!"
"We've got lettuce going, too. It shouldn't be long."
"This was the best idea ever."
"It's one of my top five, yes," she agreed, allowing herself a smug grin as Ianto ate. He wasn't the only one who had good ideas (chess set made from pill bottles!) She'd found ancient seed packets in a metal cabinet in the greenhouse. Not many, but they could do clippings, maybe, from the plants. She'd started a garden in a back corner hidden from view, as a surprise. Ianto had found the stakes with faded old packets taped to them, and thought it wouldn't work at all, since the greenhouse had been set up with optimal conditions for the existing alien flora.
They sat in there on the floor sometimes, just sitting under the artificial UV lights, smelling the hints of loamy earth in the vats as the plants, domestic and otherworldly, silently thrived around them.
technicalities
"It's seven years," Ianto said. He pushed a file drawer closed with his foot and leaned against it, reading from a sheet in a folder. "Okay, operating on the assumption that everything outside the lock is like normal, it says that usually, a missing person may be declared legally dead no less than seven years after disappearing without explanation, unless other convincing evidence of the person’s death can be shown." He looked up. "In England and Wales, the Family Division of the High Court holds proceedings for the presumption of death in the absence of a death certificate or other acceptable affidavit. The court may be persuaded that a missing person’s death occurred, if it can be shown the person was 'exposed to a specific peril of death' and the person’s absence remains otherwise unexplained. The court will also accept as evidence the military’s finding that one of its members has gone missing in action."
Gwen nodded. "Right. Knew that from the Heddlu. And the missing Rift victims. We push through a legal death cert if we can ID people out at the island. So their families can get the insurance without waiting."
"Yeah, and the... faked deaths, same deal, so yeah, legally seven years, right?"
"That part about 'specific peril' though," Gwen pointed out. "We have a risky job. It would be assumed that we're dead long before the seven years rolls round."
"Do you think that Jack assumes we're dead now?"
"We don't have a way of knowing."
"Because he'd give up after a while," Ianto said. "Don't look at me like that."
imprisonment
"Janet," Gwen said quietly. "D'you suppose she's alive down there?"
"Well, we can't get to her, so I suppose she's beyond the edges of the time lock, like Myfanwy." Myfanwy had been let out of the Hub when the Earth had begun to shift and she'd screeched and clamoured for release. Weren't departing flocks the first warning sign of impending disaster? Inspired, Gwen and Ianto had tried to scale the walls with the help of a rope harness and a ladder, but found the shield had an invisible roof.
"I'd give her the scrambled egg packets." The growing pile in the corner of the storeroom were strictly last resort. But Janet wasn't picky.
history
"Remember that night we had to avoid ourselves? Or-"
"Or god knows what. Yeah. That was sort of terrible." Gwen rubbed her collarbone.
"Right. Terrible. I seem to recall you had a shiatsu massage."
"And you probably had another kind," Gwen grinned at Ianto and he cleared his throat.
"Maybe. Anyway, what if we came back at the wrong time? Earlier, I mean."
"That isn't possible, is it?"
Ianto rolled his eyes and gestured at the frozen Dalek. Bloody Torchwood made anything possible.
"Yeah. Well."
"We'd have to avoid ourselves for however long it was."
"Then what happens? There are two of us? Or... four of us." Gwen waved her hands. "Oh, you know what I mean. What happens when we catch up with ourselves? Or does that even happen?"
"Until we go into the time lock."
"And then we just let ourselves rot in here? Again? No. No way, Ianto."
"We'd fuck up our own timeline. We couldn't change history at all. Maybe we'd have to convince Jack to freeze us, and then take retcon."
Gwen made a face. "Not bloody likely, ending up in the past," she muttered. "Fuck. I think you've finally broken my brain."
"We're on the Rift. Anything can happen."
"I know. But tell me the truth; if we went back in time, you wouldn't change anything? Even though you aren't supposed to?" Ianto tilted his head and she continued. "Yeah, 'course you would. Warn Owen about the bullet? Save Tosh? You wouldn't stop what happened at Canary Wharf, or at the very least, tell yourself to take..." she paused, "to take Lisa on a holiday that week? You would."
"Jack didn't. Remember? Jack was frozen after being buried. He told them to do it."
Gwen stared at Ianto until his eyes met hers. "We aren't Jack. Jack has a lot of time, and he knows it. Jack's going to lose everybody, Ianto. All of us, one day. He's big-picture. All we've got is one lifespan."
"All right. Then we have to promise not to alter our timelines. We could... affect things."
"So we just avoid ourselves to get away from the temptation. Leave the country. Go to Tuscany."
"Tuscany?"
"It would be nice," Gwen said. "Better than being frozen, anyway."
"I'm buying stock in Google."
"Call this one Plan G, then."
solitude
He does this, sometimes. Retreats into a part of the Hub where she won't go, just to be alone with his thoughts for a while. Sometimes he cries. He doesn't say a word but a bit of characteristic pink puffiness about the eyes gives it away. She recognises it since she does it herself. It would be futile to cry together. They each have to be strong.
She'd like to hold him, to make it all better. But she can't. She can tell he wouldn't want that sort of coddling, anyway.
It never lasts more than half a day. They don't really talk about it, after.
other people's stories
"Come, let's away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds I' th' cage."
"That's a good one," Ianto said, glancing up.
"King Lear."
"Read to me?"
"All of it?"
"Why not? You have other plans?"
"I don't." She put her feet up on the coffee table and crossed them, and turned back to the beginning of the first act.
"Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Ianto read.
"I would fucking love a piece of cake right now."
"Or ale."
Gwen groaned. "Lager. Jesus."
"Well, we have those pound cakes," Ianto gestured towards the breakroom.
"Pound cake in a bag. Well, to be fair, they're not bad, really, with the strawberries. Boring though."
"After a while all MREs are boring. I was sceptical before, but now I think the idea of nutrition pills wouldn't be that bad," Ianto said. "Pop a capsule for breakfast and never have to face omelette-in-a-bag again."
"But I still want a pizza. A really great pizza, not the shit from Jubilee."
"With anchovies."
"Disgusting!" Gwen wrinkled her nose. "It's a bit stupid, isn't it?"
"You not liking anchovies is extremely stupid."
"Not that." Gwen elbowed Ianto in the side. "Being stuck in here, god knows what outside, and going on about missing body lotion and pizzas and getting a coffee at that one place on the Bay. It makes me feel shallow, sometimes."
"No," Ianto said. "It makes me feel normal." He put a ten-pound note in the book and placed the volume on the coffee table. "Wait, what place on the Bay?"
"The one. You know, the one with the bloke."
"The Most-Eligible Bachelor in Wales? That place?"
"Yep." Gwen blushed. "Tosh made me go with her, all right?"
"The coffee isn't even that good."
"I know."
Day 388
Sometimes, from the back, Ianto looked like Jack (though he'd forgone the braces in favour of his own black leather belt). When she stood near him, she thought sometimes she could still smell Jack, but it was probably her imagination.
She'd called him Jack once, by accident. "God, I'm so sorry, you just looked-"
"I know. It's all right. I did that to a stranger in Morrison's, once."
"Called him Jack?"
"No. Mum." Ianto grinned. "I followed this woman around in the shop and put things in her trolley thinking it was ours. I didn't even notice until she said something. She looked exactly like my mother from the back."
"What's your mum like?"
"Dead."
"I'm sorry."
They said "I'm sorry," a lot, lately.
discovery
They found it, finally. A cache of vodka. They set aside two gallons aside for "medicinal purposes" ("Gallon jugs!" Ianto had exclaimed, in awe) and poured shots into plastic cups. They'd thought the jug containers in boxes in one of the storerooms were full of spare water or vinegar for cleaning. They'd turned up a lot of random shit in the storerooms, mostly useless. A crate full of acrylic clipboards was one. How many clipboards could they go through?
"So fuckeded up," Gwen said. She slid down the edge of the sofa to the hard floor next to Ianto. "You?"
"Shit drunk," he concurred, and pulled her over his lap, into a sloppy kiss. She kissed him back. It was endless and artless, like this whole mess of a situation. "M'sorry," he said, before his arms tightened around her waist and he heaved her back on the hideous plaid sofa she slept on, and he said it again when he accidentally yanked a strand of hair when pulling Jack's white shirt over her head.
Go to part II
dark_fest Title: 99:00
Author
51stcenturyfox Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Gwen/Ianto (+ canon pairings)
Rating: R
Length: ~10,500 words
Warnings: References to suicide
Prompt: Ianto and Gwen - caught in the Hub together when Tosh's time lock traps the Dalek. What if it never releases them?
Summary: The more things stay the same, the more they change.
Notes: Beta credit and thank you's go to
copperbadge and neifile7 
Pushing a hand (and then punching a fist) against the shimmering wall between them and their attacker did nothing. Neither did throwing their bodies at it, or a metal chair; over and over, the chair simply plunged into the shield's surface and stuck. They pulled it out for further attempts but the surface hardened, and finally, the chair bounced off and clattered to the floor, losing a wheel and the backrest and they gave up.
Half the Hub was on the other side of the time lock: the archives, the sub-etheric resonator, and the exits. The phones wouldn't dial out and the internet was a wash; the browsers simply timed out and email wouldn't send -- it merely threw the same error, over and over. It didn't stop them from trying.
Still, the ventilation was good, the water and electricity flowed and Ianto said there was a store of supplies for emergencies. Surely this would be sorted in no time.
provisions
"Guess it's not hours then, or days. Or weeks." Ianto gestured at the frozen counter, on the ninth day.
"It could be broken."
"It's Toshnology, Gwen."
"True, but made of alien bits and bobs too, right?" Gwen leaned back on the sofa and brushed the hair from her eyes. "It hadn't been real-world tested at all, as far as we know."
The time lock was meant to enclose the entire Hub, but had isolated them from the threat when activated. Since the attacker, the what-was-it? Oh right, the Dalek, was in the Hub, the time lock cordon had been apparently tossed up inside based on intruder detection.
There were stacks and stacks of supplies (Gwen cheered at the sight of loo roll) and foodstuffs on one of the accessible sublevels; American Meals-Ready-to-Eat -- field rations. U.S Government Property, said the printing on the thick olive-drab plastic. Gwen was first surprised they weren't British rations and then again surprised they weren't stamped with the Torchwood T like nearly everything else in the Hub.
"They call them Meals Rejected by the Enemy,'" Ianto said, and Gwen grinned as she squeezed a bit of peanut butter onto his cracker.
"They're not that bad, though," she noted gamely as he stuffed it into his mouth. Between the heavy plastic packets with little heaters in them and the tinned fruit and veg, they had enough food to last them for a few decades. Team meals times six and five years worth of sealed rations for each. The 21st century is when it all changes, Jack had said. She guessed he'd preparing for something quite possibly very dire indeed. "So you knew about this stockpile? What did you think of it?"
"I... thought it was an excessive amount of Meals in Plastic Bags."
"Well, I'm grateful for excessive." She glanced at the bullets, still suspended in midair between them and the Dalek. She wondered if it could see them, if it was trapped in time as well.
The apple sitting on her desk hadn't even begun to soften, let alone rot, so the food apparently wouldn't spoil either, no matter how long they were here. Gwen pressed that thought way, way down, into the little ball of worry which sat inside her like the Cajun Rice w/ Sausage and Cheddar Cheese Pretzels.
work
The code base was inaccessible; some kind of fail-safe. If Toshiko had been here, there might have been a way to disable the shield, but that couldn't be helped. They made numerous password attempts, but everything they tried resulted in an Access Denied error.
"We could do the dictionary," Gwen suggested. "Set up a program to try every word. I mean, we could try-"
"Do you think Tosh would have used a dictionary word? It's probably Pi to 99 characters with zeroes and ones randomly thrown in," Ianto grumbled.
"Yeah. Probably."
They tried to play cards, but it wasn't distracting enough; you could still dwell on other things when you played cards, and Gwen complained that Ianto won far too often. Ianto settled on a routine of computer games --"Oi, could you put on the headphones? That music is driving me-" "Oh, right, sorry." "No worries, tea?"-- and Gwen had begun to poke her way through Jack's lighter novels. They both dismissed the Complete Works of Shakespeare and War and Peace.
They'd worked for the first three weeks, clearing a backlog of paperwork. The routine was comforting, in a way. Gwen thought it was probably healthy, too -- she'd read books on incarceration and though this wasn't that exactly, there were things that happened to people's minds when they were locked up. She dismissed the bits she'd recalled about PTSD from dealing with aggressive cellies and surprise searches by guards and convinced Ianto to stop marking ticks on the whiteboard, one per day. He rubbed the Sharpie-markered lines off with a flourish.
"Better?"
"It just felt creepy, like we actually are in a prison," she pointed out. "Or a dungeon."
"What? These luxurious accommodations?" He hoisted the metal bin and made for the incinerator.
"We're lucky we can burn the rubbish!" she called out. "We could be living a nest of rats."
"Mmm, rats," Ianto answered, over his shoulder.
He'd already pointed out that his watch was analog, and the movement displayed date as well as time. It was... handy. Sometimes he'd start and she'd look up. "It's two in the morning."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Right," she'd say, and he'd make for Jack's cubbyhole. It was weird how the lack of sunlight and structured days made a person lose track of the hour.
They'd tried structure, but there wasn't much else to do in the way of work without the ability to sort through artefacts and archives, and the Rift monitor was silent, so they stopped feeling guilty about skiving off. One night, they sat at the boardroom table over tuna and noodles and watched DVDs on the flatscreen.
"Independence Day?"
"Ha ha, Ianto. And by that I mean 'Ha. No'."
"Mars Attacks?" he suggested.
"Still not funny."
"My sense of humour is a dark one."
"I'd noticed that. Before."
tick-tock
"Ianto!" Gwen called out on the afternoon of the thirty-third day. He came to her side and followed her wavering finger. "Look!"
"Ninety-eight."
"Yeah. It must have... it must have changed."
"I don't know when it did. Haven't looked at it all week."
"Hmm." Ianto stroked his chin.
"Maybe, well. Could it have changed with the month?"
"If so, the time lock was apparently defaulted to 99 months." Ianto's eyes met hers. "Any... ideas?"
"Could be worse. Could be 99 years."
"Oh, there's a reassuring thought."
"Still, light at the end of the tunnel, right?"
"That's eight years, Gwen."
Gwen paused, then tapped on her mobile, charged daily without fail to serve as a portable alarm clock, though it wouldn't dial out. "Calculator says it's eight years point-two-five. So eight years, three months, give or take a day."
Ianto crooked an ankle into one of the chairs and sat, folding his arms. "Look. It's just been over a month, right? That's- that's nothing. Jack will figure it out."
"'Course he will, sweetheart," Gwen said, sounding entirely unconvinced.
"Or the Doctor."
"Now, that's more likely. Could we dig out, you think?"
"Like in Shawshank Redemption?" Ianto shook his head. The walls were several feet thick with nothing but sandy soil on the other side; they were too close to the water. The sandy material of the substrate would just flow into any opening they'd manage to create. They'd already discussed it. They'd discussed everything they could come up with.
"Well, we've got some tools, and apparently plenty of time-"
"It won't work. It could take 30 years. And what's out there, anyway?" Ianto gestured at the only accessible CCTV feed, showing the Plass, empty except for the outstretched arm of the newsagent at his stand, frozen, just after he'd cut a free the string from a stack of newspapers. Even though the earth itself had moved, he still had to make a living, didn't he?
They didn't know, couldn't know, if he was frozen in time, or the feed was stuck on that frame here in the Hub. Both preferred to think it was the feed.
everything changes
"Fifty-eight days," Gwen muttered over coffee. They were down to cans of the stuff which Ianto clearly hadn't picked out. Still, there was a lot of it, and it was caffeinated, thank stars.
"Yup."
"You know, I haven't... " she coughed. "This is too much information, and I apologise in advance for saying, but it might be important. I haven't um, had my cycle come 'round."
Ianto knitted his brows, confused.
"My female cycle."
"Oh. Right. Maybe it's the stress. That happens, doesn't it? In boot camp and wars and situations like that?"
"Maybe. Yeah, but we're not training for the Olympics, either. Maybe we're not changing in any way." Gwen paused. "Aging or anything. I mean, I don't mind that our hair isn't growing - saves effort trimming my fringe, or shaving, yeah? But it can't just be down to stress. We're not changing at all, are we?"
"Not physically, as far as I can tell. We might be a bit mental and stir-crazy by the time Jack gets us out of here, though."
"We're mental and stir-crazy now."
"Point."
wardrobe
Ianto dropped them silently on Gwen's lap. Four white t-shirts. She glanced down and then up at his face.
"These are Jack's," he said, simply. They'd been re-washing their own gear every few days, though Ianto had traded his dry-clean-only suit for a pair of jeans and a plain blue jumper he'd kept in his locker for weevil hunting after a week, but Gwen thought he'd looked very... uncomfortable dressed in things designed to be comfortable. In his other hand, Ianto held a clutch of clothes hangers. He waved them. "I'm going to start wearing his shirts and trousers. Do you want any of these?"
"No, I'm fine." Gwen had found a stack of clean scrubs in the Medbay. Too small for Ianto, but they worked a treat for her. And they had the washer, so there was plenty to wear. "But thanks for the t-shirts."
missives
Gwen flicked her fingernails against the edges of her thick spiral notebook, the one she'd written case notes in when she'd first come to Torchwood and lost in the bottom of her desk drawer. Argolin: Green. Aggro. Smell a bit like Stilton cheese.
She'd write another letter to Rhys tonight, once she was settled in on the grotty sofa -- her bed --for the night with the afghan tucked in under her elbows. This was another thing she did every day. Frankly, she was running out of things to write: Still TRAPPED! WISH YOU WERE HERE! ONLY NOT! BECAUSE WE'RE TRAPPED IN THE FUCKING HUB.
Day 88.
Today Ianto and I cleaned the breakroom again. It was dusty. It's not like we really cook in there. I'm running out of things to read so maybe I should write a book. Ianto could too, and we could read each other's novels. That would be thrilling, no doubt. I think his would be an international spy caper and mine would be a holiday romance. The sort you take to the beach and dog-ear and get sand in but don't mind because you're slightly embarrassed to be seen reading it anyway. There are too many books about holiday romances in Tuscany and Provence already, though. Couple meet, start planting olive trees or build a vineyard, have mishaps, end up happy and successful and brilliant. Could set it in Swansea, but that's not exactly glamourous, is it?
Confession: I've already started writing it and I crossed out "Tuscany". Hmm. Bears thought.
Not sure I have a whole book in me, Rhys. I could write my memoirs but I hate memoirs by people who aren't old. Because then what do they do later? Write another one. It's a ploy to sell the same book all over again, isn't it? "Updated with over 300 pages of new material!" People are so gullible.
Hopefully this isn't the end and there will be more to tell. Hopefully you'll see these notes one day, no matter what happens to us, and realise how much I love you.
personnel matters
They'd had this conversation before, too many times to count:
"It was five years, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Gwen answered. "With Hart. That arsehole. You think the two-week time loop thing was like this?"
"Might have been." Ianto brushed nonexistent dust from his trousers. He glanced up at the CCTV, still showing the newsagent on the Plass, his hand gesturing in midair, and it had to be the CCTV frozen there, please let it be. "So, you still think Jack will figure this out before the 99 months... I mean, his strap-"
"I never really thought he'd be able to- it apparently didn't help him when he was stranded before. He'd have had it then, right?"
"Yeah. Maybe. But-"
"Maybe they don't know. Maybe they've just assumed we're dead." Gwen pushed aside her Jules Verne. "They've probably had our funerals, Ianto. Jack's likely looking to replace us if he hasn't already."
"God." Ianto fumbled with his pen, nearly dropped it, and instead plunked it down onto Tosh's slightly-tilted desk.
"Not. No, I don't mean like that. Just... you know, in terms of staffing." Gwen stopped the pen rolling off the edge with one finger and handed it to him. "But do you think..." she trailed off. "When do you think they'll move on? Well, I mean eventually, but yeah, if Rhys thinks I'm dead? If Jack thinks you are?"
"I don't know, Gwen."
"It's like he's gone, not me."
"You're right here."
"Maybe we're dead."
"What?"
"Limbo?"
"No, there's nothing," Ianto said. "There's nothing after you die."
"Jack says there's nothing. But he doesn't know."
"Gwen, he's died scores of times."
"Maybe his deaths aren't like... normal deaths. Really final, you know? Maybe there's a kind of tether keeping him here and bringing him back again and again. Maybe one day he'll finally be at peace."
Ianto was silent. He looked away for a moment. "Maybe we're tethered too. We're ghosts," he said, putting on a wavering tone, "ghosts who are haaaaunting the Hub. And Jack is shitting himself because that pen didn't fall to the floor and you're got his novels out of order."
"Yeah, right."
night terror
Gwen's bare feet slapped on the cold concrete floor as she ran for Jack's office. By some sort of unspoken code, Ianto kept the hatch door in the floor open when he slept, just like they always made sure to say if one of them would be in another accessible part of the Hub for a while. A faint light beamed upward. "Ianto?" Gwen called, kneeling at the edge of the hole in the floor. She leaned forward and peeked down, but Ianto was asleep, stretched out on Jack's camp bed, an aged paperback book facedown beside him on the blue-grey blanket, his thumb tucked inside.
"Ianto?" she called again, softly, but he didn't stir. She sat back on her heels but stayed there for a while, watching his chest rise and fall, before her knees got too cold and she slowly stood and walked back to the sofa. She put a light on and tried to sleep, but the familiar hum of the Hub wasn't that comforting.
"We're not ghosts," she said, to no one. "We're not."
the box
"Look," Ianto said, hefting the box onto the conference table. "I don't want you to flip out, but I have a plan."
"A plan?" Gwen quirked a brow and spread her hands out flat on the table's surface. She poked at the cool metal of the box with her thumbs. "Another? Are we up to what, Plan F?"
"We keep stuff in here. Letters, notes, files. Whatever we document over the course of the time lock. It's lead-lined and fireproof."
"Why? What for?"
"It's an archive. In case we don't make it." Ianto slid a thumb drive across the table and Gwen caught it before it plummeted to her lap. "Here, have a stupid stick. We've got a ton of them."
She peered at it; it was tagged with her name. "Have you been keeping a diary?"
"Yes. We can do video, too. I think we have a responsibility to document this. What if mainframe doesn't hold any data? What if we don't make it?" Ianto repeated.
"If we don't make it, Jack will remember us," Gwen murmured, as she felt the edge of the thumb drive bite into her palm, click against her wedding ring. "He can't die, and he won't forget us."
"Maybe," Ianto allowed. He turned the box around and showed her their names, stenciled on. When Gwen traced her first initial, she found the paint still tacky.
communication
"Do you have a Facebook?" Gwen asked.
"God, no."
"You've seen it though, right?"
"Yeah. I didn't see the point. Why would I want to talk to people I went to school with? Pack of rotters."
"You can make it private."
"Well, then what's the point?"
"No, I mean, just add your friends."
Ianto raised an eyebrow. "So that'd be... you and Jack then. Andy? Kathy?" He laughed. "You have one?"
"I do. I don't do anything with it, though. What would I put on the status line: 'Iced another Hoix today. They're right bastards but if you shoot them square in the face they really drop fast?' Anyway, Rhys got one and talked me into it."
"I didn't know Rhys did social networking."
"He talks to his mates and plays pirate... mafia or something."
Ianto nodded and then shook his head. "I have no idea what that is. It must be nice, though, to have mates outside work. No offence," he added with a grin, when Gwen mock-punched his arm. "God, we would have the most boring Facebooks ever."
"It'll be obsolete when we get out of here. There'll be some other big new thing." Ianto picked up a bag of M&Ms and Gwen examined the ragged edge of her thumbnail. "Rhys talks to his old sweetheart on it."
"Gwen, I'm sure it's nothing."
"No, I know. It's just. He'd been chatting and when I came home late once, I think it was that time we were tracking those bear things, remember? Well, the chat screen was left up. I didn't say a word, just shut down the PC."
Ianto nodded and held out the packet of candies, shook a few into Gwen's hand.
"She's divorced, Patricia. I think he must have... I think he left it there so I'd see it and feel bad, you know? Coming in at all hours. Like 'see here, Gwen'."
"Did you ask him about it?"
"No. Maybe I had it coming." Ianto offered her the rest of the bag, but she shook her head. "Have it coming. And now we're dead to them, so."
"But it takes years to be considered legally dead, right?"
She sighed. "Yeah. Sort of."
talent
"Ianto, what's your special skill?"
"My what?"
"Your special skill. Can you whistle symphonies or touch the tip of your nose with your tongue or... everyone has some skill like that." Gwen turned on the sofa and sat with her legs tucked under her, facing him.
"Counting cards."
"You! You... fucker!" Gwen put on a stern face but dissolved into laughter.
"What about you?"
"My special skill?" Gwen produced a 10p coin from her pocket and made a loose fist, then centred the disk on the knuckle of her index joint. Rolling her fingers, she flipped it knuckle-to-knuckle and back again.
"Show-off. You only brought this skills thing up so you should show me that."
"I'll teach you how."
"All right then," Ianto said, mollified.
nature
"Harvest!" Gwen placed a handful of strawberries on Ianto's desk and produced a slightly green tomato.
"Oh my god!" He stared at her, then plucked a berry from the napkin and popped it into his mouth, then grinned in ecstasy. "Fresh fruit!"
"We've got lettuce going, too. It shouldn't be long."
"This was the best idea ever."
"It's one of my top five, yes," she agreed, allowing herself a smug grin as Ianto ate. He wasn't the only one who had good ideas (chess set made from pill bottles!) She'd found ancient seed packets in a metal cabinet in the greenhouse. Not many, but they could do clippings, maybe, from the plants. She'd started a garden in a back corner hidden from view, as a surprise. Ianto had found the stakes with faded old packets taped to them, and thought it wouldn't work at all, since the greenhouse had been set up with optimal conditions for the existing alien flora.
They sat in there on the floor sometimes, just sitting under the artificial UV lights, smelling the hints of loamy earth in the vats as the plants, domestic and otherworldly, silently thrived around them.
technicalities
"It's seven years," Ianto said. He pushed a file drawer closed with his foot and leaned against it, reading from a sheet in a folder. "Okay, operating on the assumption that everything outside the lock is like normal, it says that usually, a missing person may be declared legally dead no less than seven years after disappearing without explanation, unless other convincing evidence of the person’s death can be shown." He looked up. "In England and Wales, the Family Division of the High Court holds proceedings for the presumption of death in the absence of a death certificate or other acceptable affidavit. The court may be persuaded that a missing person’s death occurred, if it can be shown the person was 'exposed to a specific peril of death' and the person’s absence remains otherwise unexplained. The court will also accept as evidence the military’s finding that one of its members has gone missing in action."
Gwen nodded. "Right. Knew that from the Heddlu. And the missing Rift victims. We push through a legal death cert if we can ID people out at the island. So their families can get the insurance without waiting."
"Yeah, and the... faked deaths, same deal, so yeah, legally seven years, right?"
"That part about 'specific peril' though," Gwen pointed out. "We have a risky job. It would be assumed that we're dead long before the seven years rolls round."
"Do you think that Jack assumes we're dead now?"
"We don't have a way of knowing."
"Because he'd give up after a while," Ianto said. "Don't look at me like that."
imprisonment
"Janet," Gwen said quietly. "D'you suppose she's alive down there?"
"Well, we can't get to her, so I suppose she's beyond the edges of the time lock, like Myfanwy." Myfanwy had been let out of the Hub when the Earth had begun to shift and she'd screeched and clamoured for release. Weren't departing flocks the first warning sign of impending disaster? Inspired, Gwen and Ianto had tried to scale the walls with the help of a rope harness and a ladder, but found the shield had an invisible roof.
"I'd give her the scrambled egg packets." The growing pile in the corner of the storeroom were strictly last resort. But Janet wasn't picky.
history
"Remember that night we had to avoid ourselves? Or-"
"Or god knows what. Yeah. That was sort of terrible." Gwen rubbed her collarbone.
"Right. Terrible. I seem to recall you had a shiatsu massage."
"And you probably had another kind," Gwen grinned at Ianto and he cleared his throat.
"Maybe. Anyway, what if we came back at the wrong time? Earlier, I mean."
"That isn't possible, is it?"
Ianto rolled his eyes and gestured at the frozen Dalek. Bloody Torchwood made anything possible.
"Yeah. Well."
"We'd have to avoid ourselves for however long it was."
"Then what happens? There are two of us? Or... four of us." Gwen waved her hands. "Oh, you know what I mean. What happens when we catch up with ourselves? Or does that even happen?"
"Until we go into the time lock."
"And then we just let ourselves rot in here? Again? No. No way, Ianto."
"We'd fuck up our own timeline. We couldn't change history at all. Maybe we'd have to convince Jack to freeze us, and then take retcon."
Gwen made a face. "Not bloody likely, ending up in the past," she muttered. "Fuck. I think you've finally broken my brain."
"We're on the Rift. Anything can happen."
"I know. But tell me the truth; if we went back in time, you wouldn't change anything? Even though you aren't supposed to?" Ianto tilted his head and she continued. "Yeah, 'course you would. Warn Owen about the bullet? Save Tosh? You wouldn't stop what happened at Canary Wharf, or at the very least, tell yourself to take..." she paused, "to take Lisa on a holiday that week? You would."
"Jack didn't. Remember? Jack was frozen after being buried. He told them to do it."
Gwen stared at Ianto until his eyes met hers. "We aren't Jack. Jack has a lot of time, and he knows it. Jack's going to lose everybody, Ianto. All of us, one day. He's big-picture. All we've got is one lifespan."
"All right. Then we have to promise not to alter our timelines. We could... affect things."
"So we just avoid ourselves to get away from the temptation. Leave the country. Go to Tuscany."
"Tuscany?"
"It would be nice," Gwen said. "Better than being frozen, anyway."
"I'm buying stock in Google."
"Call this one Plan G, then."
solitude
He does this, sometimes. Retreats into a part of the Hub where she won't go, just to be alone with his thoughts for a while. Sometimes he cries. He doesn't say a word but a bit of characteristic pink puffiness about the eyes gives it away. She recognises it since she does it herself. It would be futile to cry together. They each have to be strong.
She'd like to hold him, to make it all better. But she can't. She can tell he wouldn't want that sort of coddling, anyway.
It never lasts more than half a day. They don't really talk about it, after.
other people's stories
"Come, let's away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds I' th' cage."
"That's a good one," Ianto said, glancing up.
"King Lear."
"Read to me?"
"All of it?"
"Why not? You have other plans?"
"I don't." She put her feet up on the coffee table and crossed them, and turned back to the beginning of the first act.
"Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Ianto read.
"I would fucking love a piece of cake right now."
"Or ale."
Gwen groaned. "Lager. Jesus."
"Well, we have those pound cakes," Ianto gestured towards the breakroom.
"Pound cake in a bag. Well, to be fair, they're not bad, really, with the strawberries. Boring though."
"After a while all MREs are boring. I was sceptical before, but now I think the idea of nutrition pills wouldn't be that bad," Ianto said. "Pop a capsule for breakfast and never have to face omelette-in-a-bag again."
"But I still want a pizza. A really great pizza, not the shit from Jubilee."
"With anchovies."
"Disgusting!" Gwen wrinkled her nose. "It's a bit stupid, isn't it?"
"You not liking anchovies is extremely stupid."
"Not that." Gwen elbowed Ianto in the side. "Being stuck in here, god knows what outside, and going on about missing body lotion and pizzas and getting a coffee at that one place on the Bay. It makes me feel shallow, sometimes."
"No," Ianto said. "It makes me feel normal." He put a ten-pound note in the book and placed the volume on the coffee table. "Wait, what place on the Bay?"
"The one. You know, the one with the bloke."
"The Most-Eligible Bachelor in Wales? That place?"
"Yep." Gwen blushed. "Tosh made me go with her, all right?"
"The coffee isn't even that good."
"I know."
Day 388
Sometimes, from the back, Ianto looked like Jack (though he'd forgone the braces in favour of his own black leather belt). When she stood near him, she thought sometimes she could still smell Jack, but it was probably her imagination.
She'd called him Jack once, by accident. "God, I'm so sorry, you just looked-"
"I know. It's all right. I did that to a stranger in Morrison's, once."
"Called him Jack?"
"No. Mum." Ianto grinned. "I followed this woman around in the shop and put things in her trolley thinking it was ours. I didn't even notice until she said something. She looked exactly like my mother from the back."
"What's your mum like?"
"Dead."
"I'm sorry."
They said "I'm sorry," a lot, lately.
discovery
They found it, finally. A cache of vodka. They set aside two gallons aside for "medicinal purposes" ("Gallon jugs!" Ianto had exclaimed, in awe) and poured shots into plastic cups. They'd thought the jug containers in boxes in one of the storerooms were full of spare water or vinegar for cleaning. They'd turned up a lot of random shit in the storerooms, mostly useless. A crate full of acrylic clipboards was one. How many clipboards could they go through?
"So fuckeded up," Gwen said. She slid down the edge of the sofa to the hard floor next to Ianto. "You?"
"Shit drunk," he concurred, and pulled her over his lap, into a sloppy kiss. She kissed him back. It was endless and artless, like this whole mess of a situation. "M'sorry," he said, before his arms tightened around her waist and he heaved her back on the hideous plaid sofa she slept on, and he said it again when he accidentally yanked a strand of hair when pulling Jack's white shirt over her head.
Go to part II