Title: Memories of War, Memories of Love (1/1)

Characters: Jack Harkness, John Hart, Ianto Jones (mentioned), Toshiko Sato (mentioned), mainframe

Rating: Positively innocent
Disclaimer: As if!

Spoilers: None. Set in my Homecoming AU, sometime after The Siege of Annwfn

Summary: Jack discovers John Hart’s secrets…

Author’s Notes: This is by way of being an epilogue to A Very Private War. Links to Siege here and link to War here

           Jack signed the last of the reports and leaned back with a sigh. Sometimes it felt paperwork was all he did. It was mostly his own fault, though. When the government had suggested bringing Torchwood One back up to full operational strength instead of simply acting as research labs and archives of extraterrestrial materials, he had balked; Torchwood London, he argued, was too close to the seat of power, too easily manipulated by ambitious politicians. He hadn’t expected to get anywhere with his objections, but he found himself with a few powerful allies, mostly Canary Wharf and Valiant survivors who had bitter experience with abuses of power.

            The final compromise had been the creation of an oversight council with Jack at its head. When he objected that he had more than enough on his plate, the Prime Minister had laughed at him.

            “As the Americans would say, suck it up, Jack. You started this and you’re the only one we all trust to see it through.”

            So Jack had gotten himself saddled with twice the responsibilities and five times the paperwork.

            He neatened up the pile – Andy was even fussier than Ianto had been about paperwork – then decided to call it a night and go home. Usually he would have taken the work home rather than stay late in the Hub, but with Ianto off on a book tour in the United States, it had been simpler to do the paperwork in his office.

            He was halfway to the cog door when he heard the noise. It seemed to be coming from John’s rooms. His former partner and current computer expert had gone to bed hours before, putting the security system on automatic. Jack knew John often woke up in the middle of the night and worked for a while before going back to bed. He started to leave then something made him turn back towards the corridors leading to the interior of the Hub.

            As he reached John’s door he realized why the noise had disturbed him so much. John was whimpering. Jack had heard John screaming in rage, moaning in passion, and even howling in grief, but he was certain he had never heard him whimpering like a lost soul.

            He followed the noise straight into John’s bedroom. John was sprawled on the bed, tossing and turning, his nude body gleaming with sweat. His eyes were wide open but the pupils were blown wide, staring into nothing.

            Jack sat down on the edge of the bed. He had dealt with something like this before; Ianto had had vicious nightmares right after the Brecon Beacons incident. The most important thing was to do things gently. Any sudden move or hard words could drive John into a fugue state.

            “John,” he said, stroking lightly across the sleeping man’s forehead. “Come on back. It’s all right.”

            John took a huge breath and seemed to relax. Jack kept his hand moving, caressing John’s head and neck, but John’s next words sent a chill through him.

            “Tosh….damn it, love, be careful… no, Tosh, don’t… Ianto.. don’t, don’t do… Tosh, no!”

            With that last despairing no! John flung himself upwards so strongly that if Jack hadn’t caught him he would have fallen off the bed. His body was wracked with shudders. Suddenly  his eyes focused on Jack’s face and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut off, his head dropping onto Jack’s shoulder.

            “John?”

            “Give me a minute, will you?”

            “You were having nightmares about… what happened with Gray?” Jack’s hand smoothed down John’s back. “You have to let it go, John. Even I’ve learned that.”

            John pulled back, giving him a long look. “Not about that, Jack. That is… over and done.” He sighed. “I never told you what happened to me during the time you were up in the Valiant.”

            Jack released him as though burned. “You shouldn’t even remember. That year never happened everywhere in the Universe.”

            ‘Unless you were trapped in a time loop. In Cardiff.”

            They stared at each other, neither wanting to continue. So many things were becoming clear to Jack. When John walked back into his life a decade after Tosh’s and Owen’s deaths, he had been so different it had made Jack suspicious. In his experience, the depth of maturity John had achieved came only from a great deal of pain.  He had probed, but John had refused to talk about it. He simply asked for a chance to prove himself, and Jack had granted it because it was John asking. Not that he had completely trusted the man, but… it was John asking.

            “Tell me. All of it.”

            “Nothing much to tell.” John rubbed his face then ran his fingers through his hair to the back of his neck. “Some Toclafane managed to find their way to my present. After Gray. I chased them back to Cardiff and helped your team keep them bottled up in that time. I got back here before the paradox machine was destroyed, so I kept my memories.”

            “John,” Jack took the other man’s hands in his. “Tell me.”

            They sat like that through the telling. It was like lancing a boil; once he started, John couldn’t stop. The whole story poured out, his grief for Owen and Gwen and Rhys, his love for Toshiko and Ianto, the desolation of knowing he couldn’t prevent his younger self from doing what he was going to do, the disgust that their first memories of him would be of the vainglorious fool he had been. He cried through the words, but he kept talking to the end of it.

            “God, John, I am so sorry!”

            “Don’t be taking credit for this, Jack. My mess, of my own making.”

            “Ok. But why return here? Work in Torchwood? Live in the Hub?” Jack rubbed his thumbs on the back of John’s palms. “Is this your penance?”

            John laughed. “No, Jack. If anything, that year in Cardiff was my penance for what I had done, except that I wouldn’t have traded it for the world, grief and all. Still won’t. I came here because I had nowhere else to go. Then… you remember how Tosh was always experimenting with mainframe?”

            “Do I? Hell, half the time I was afraid to ask what she was doing!”

            “When I started working with my sweetheart here, I noticed something odd about her responses. She is an organic so I was expecting her intuitive capabilities to be well developed. What surprised me was the high degree of individualization of her responses to each member of the team. She likes Gwen, was a little distant to Martha at the beginning but has gradually warmed up, treats Andy like a baby brother, damn near blushes over you, and positively drools over Ianto….”

            “John, do you know what you’re suggesting?” interrupted Jack.

            “I’m not suggesting, Jack. I found Tosh’s private lab notes. The tricky little darling led me a merry chase, but I finally got my hands on them. Tosh and mainframe connived to expand mainframe’s neural network, using Tosh’s own brain as the pattern.”

            “Holy… did she understand what she was doing?”

            “Yes and no. Tosh understood that mainframe’s intellect would develop on Tosh’s own pattern, but I don’t think she understood that the personality would as well.”

            “So… that’s Tosh in there?”

            “Not quite. There’s a Tosh kernel growing in mainframe. The neural network has not reached critical mass yet. When it does…well, I don’t know exactly what we’ll get. Towards the end, Tosh added a twist to the experiment. She felt mainframe would benefit from a secondary pattern that was human but not… quite. A new path, once mainframe had reached the end of the Tosh one.”

            “Please, don’t tell me…”

            John laughed. “Who else? Hey, don’t look so horrified! That’s your child in there.”

            Jack gaped like a fish. “Never mind. I think I’ll go home and have a wee bit of a restorative, as Archie would say.” He stood up and made his way towards the door, only to stop and look back at John with a severe frown. “If I’m her father, John, and her mother is not around to protect her… well, you and I are going to have a very long talk about your intentions towards my daughter!”