Title: Memory and Time (8/?)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, 10th Doctor, Torchwood Three, others

Rating: Starts PG, but hey, it’s got Jack and Ianto in it!

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Spoilers: None. This takes place in my Homecoming AU, twelve years after Invincible Summer

Summary: Something is trying to mess with Jack’s time line…

Part one is here; Part two is here; Part three is here; Part four is here; Part five is here ; Part six is here ; Part seven is here

      
           “Is he all right?”

 

            Ianto looked up at Rhys. “Holding his own but no more.”

 

            Rhys leaned over the back of the couch to stare down at a sleeping Jack. “I’ve never seen him look more tired, and I saw him right after he had spent six days chasing a damn basilisk all over the Brecons. Is there anything we can do?”

 

            “I don’t know. I’ve been feeding him a little energy from time to time but it doesn’t seem to do much.” Ianto rubbed his eyes. “I fucking hate waiting.”

 

            “Yeah.” Rhys hesitated, then plowed on. “Ianto, are we sure that’s Owen?”

 

            “Yes. Or at least as close to our Owen as an avatar of Order can be.” Ianto smiled. “I never imagined I could be using Owen  and order in the same sentence. And Gwen gets the most expensive pair of sandals in the new Balenciaga spring line. Watching Owen being pushed around was fun.”

 

            “Oi, Tea-Boy.” Owen, coming up behind them, gave Ianto a smack on the back of the head. “More respect for the heroic dead.”

 

            “Yeah, yeah.” He turned back to his dozing lover. “Owen, can we win this fight?”

 

            The doctor pulled one of the ottomans close to the sofa and sat down. “We have a good chance. The Black Guardian tends to overreach. He’s full of pride and you know what that goeth before. Right now it’s up the Doctor and Toshi. If they manage to plug that particular hole, Chaos will be forced to send its agent against us directly.”

 

            “Who are they? Do you know?”

 

            “It’s ‘he’ not ‘they’. Chaos doesn’t like to share power too much, so it prefers to have one agent at a time. You’ve met him.”

 

            “Bilis Manger?”

 

            “Bingo.”

 

            “But he failed!” Rhys objected.

 

            “The way Chaos looks at it, that was Abbadon’s fault. Bilis did what he was supposed to do, which was to sucker us into opening the Rift.”

 

            “So it’s you against Bilis Manger?”

 

            “There might be more to it than that, Rhys. Order is a lot less paranoid than Chaos, but in some ways sneakier. I have a feeling it has more irons in the fire than just me.” Owen ran a hand down Jack’s arm. “But I don’t know. Your turn, Ianto. How does it feel, what’s happening to you?”

 

            Ianto grinned. “By whose standards?”

 

            They all succumbed to a fit of giggles. Owen slung an arm over Ianto’s shoulders and rested his forehead against it.

 

            “Bloody Torchwood,” he gasped.

 

            That set them off again. Somewhere in a small corner of his mind, Ianto knew that there was something not normal about sitting in an underground lair sharing a hearty laugh with a man who had been dead for over thirty years, but he was grateful to have to chance. And Torchwood had never been about normal anyway.

 

            “Hey, boys, don’t start without me.”

 

            They looked at Jack. Ianto saw the real emotion in Jack’s eyes, the love he hid behind the cheerfully randy comments because people mattered so much it hurt. He knew the others could see it too, and wondered if Jack realized how transparent he had become to his chosen family.

 

            “You wish, Harkness.” Owen forced the words out between giggles. “You just wish.”

 

            “Oh, all right.” Jack mock-pouted. “If you are all going to be that way about it I’ll settle for something to eat. I’m hungry.”

 

            Owen helped him up. “That’s a good sign. Rhys’s kid brought back all kinds of stuff. Nothing heavy, mind you. You’re still not out of the woods.”

 

            “Yes, doctor. Soup and toast okay?”

 

            I’ll go get it,” Rhys headed out to the kitchen. “I’ll nick some for the rest of us while I’m at it.”

 

             Owen watched him go, a small frown on this face. “I wonder if Gwen knows the prize she got.”

 

            Ianto stood up, stretching to work out the kinks from sitting in one position for several hours. “She does. Don’t ever doubt that.”

 

            “I’m glad she had the chance. Me,” Owen looked towards the place where Tosh’s work station used to be, “I didn’t know what was good for me until it was too late.”

 

            Unexpectedly, Ianto found his throat clogged up with grief. His memories of Tosh had softened with time, and when he thought of her he tended to think of the good things, the fun times. Owen’s pain seemed fresh and undimmed.

 

            “Owen,” Jack asked hesitantly, “there’s no chance…”

 

            “No. Believe me, I asked. They said she had moved on. When the mortal body dies, one moves on,” he quoted. “That’s why all you see is darkness, Jack. Your body isn’t really dead, so you never move on.”

 

            “And what is beyond the darkness?”

 

            “Don’t ask me. I’m still on this side.” Owen twitched his shoulder in the old familiar conversation closed gesture. “Here’s Rhys with our food.”

 

            “Good, I’m really starv…”

 

            Jack’s words cut off as he pitched forward, collapsing onto the steps separating the sitting area from the rest of the Hub. Ianto was moving before he even thought about it, his protective instincts overriding the flare up of panic. He lifted Jack up, holding him close, pouring his love through their link. He nearly wept in relief when he felt Jack’s hands grab at the small of his back. He could hear everyone in the place running as the Rift alarms went off, but he was truly aware only of Jack’s body shaking in his arms.

 

            “Hurts…”

 

            The weakness in Jack’s voice set off the panic he had been trying to avoid. “Owen! What the hell is going on?”

 

            The doctor rushed up with a steaming mug in one hand. “Jack, drink this. Come on, sip. Yes, it’s disgusting, but it’ll give you some energy.” He glanced at the shocked faces around them. “Something’s happening to Jack in the future. Well, his past. Jesus, keeping his time line straight makes me dizzy. Chaos is feeding and amplifying the pain and shock of the event back , forward, whatever, to our Jack. He’s reliving it all.”

 

            “Can we cut the link?”

 

           “How? It’s his life we’re… no, wait, there might be a way. The Vortex. You can take him into the Vortex. Chaos and Order both avoid it because they have no power there.”

 

            “How?”

 

            “What do you do when you travel through it?”

 

            “I become… something else. But I wouldn’t be able to change Jack!”

 

            “You have taken people through the Rift.”

 

            “Trips take only a few minutes. I use myself as a shield for whoever I’m transporting. But you’re thinking of keeping him there for hours. I don’t know if I can.”

 

            *You can. Like this*

 

            The Teacher’s instructions were issued in the usual calm terms, but Ianto nearly went into gibbering fits at their content.  He closed his eyes, trying to fight off the nausea.

 

            *Proto-validium is extremely responsive to the right mind, and we have been conditioning yours for many years now. It shouldn’t be difficult*

 

            *But if I do this, you will die!*

 

            *Don’t be silly. Have you not listened to my lectures about TARDIS nature? I will be released. And do not worry about me. I am the Teacher, and there are going to be plenty of students for me to train, if we succeed*

 

            “Ianto! Come on, mate!” Owen’s voice had a slight edge of panic. “Focus!”

 

            Ianto’s eyes snapped open. “Do you know what he wants me to do?”

 

            “Kind of. For what it’s worth, my boss also thinks you’re ready. And look at Jack. I don’t think he can take much more.”

 

            Ianto looked at his partner with all his senses, human and TARDIS. Owen was right. Jack’s life force was flickering as his body was forced to relive the trauma in his past. Blood was seeping from his nose and ears, and he was gasping for air.

 

            “All right. Get everyone back just in case this goes south on me.”

 

            He blanked everyone and everything from his mind as he focused on the metal band around his wrist. An image arose unbidden: a small ship with a roundish nose and power nacelles under its wings. He looked at it critically and made a number of adjustments. There. He poured the image into the proto-validium, forcing the sentient metal into a new shape, then he poured himself into it, molding it all into a new living form. Pain flared along every nerve ending as he stretched his mind, himself, to become a new species of being. And then, suddenly, there was music resonating through his molecules, a minor variation of a great symphony his Potentiality recognized and welcomed joyously: the birth song of the TARDIS, pushing back the pain and midwiving him into a new existence. Two voices, two life forces where there had once been so many.

 

            *Someday there will be many again. And this time it will be right*

 

            Ianto was aware that the others in the Hub could see some of the changes taking place. He held the new form in full Potentiality in his mind, but its image flickered in and out of reality. He could sense Gwen’s fear, and John’s… amusement? And, a little further away, but sharp as a darning needle, his namesake’s intense curiosity.

 

            *The Rift-born’s mind is hungry. He will be fun to train*

 

            *How do I do this? If I materialize in the Hub, I’ll bring this section down on our heads*

 

            *Hold the image until you start to enter the Vortex, then release it*

 

            *Here we go, then*

 

            As he faded out, Jack cradled in his arms, Ianto heard Rhy’s plaintive question. “What he hell was that?”

 

            “That,” John answered, “is what a Chula warship would be if the boring engineering drones in the Chula War Department had the soul of Michelangelo. But to answer your real question, I think that was Ianto’s TARDIS body.”

 

            Exactly as Ianto had expected, the shocked silence was broken by Welsh practicality coming to the fore.

 

            “Bloody hell,” Andy said in dismay, “we’re going to have to enlarge the garage.”