Title: The Angel of Death (2/?)

Author: Emma

Characters: Jack Harkness, others

Rating: Starts PG. That's all I know.

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?

Summary: Far in the future, Jack meets someone he never expected to see again

Author's Note: I don’t know where this came from. I really don’t.

Author's Note” Beachy Amish http://www.beachyam.org/

Part One is here

Jack stared at the screen. The Angel moved through the tai-chi sequence over and over again with perfect balance and control. Each time he moved a little faster, until at the end he was moving so fast his hands were a blur. It was like watching a performance by a great dancer – body sleek rather than muscular, streamlined rather than bulky – except that the threat of violence was always subtly present in every movement.

He tapped a few keys, and the observo zoomed in. As the face came into focus, his lungs seized and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. It was Ianto. Perhaps not exactly as he remembered; after nine hundred years details were lost or altered by a memory that could not hold everything, no matter how hard it tried. Perhaps he only imagined the resemblance because he was still so desperate.

Jack touched his fingers to the screen and traced the Angel’s features. The face was a little sharper along the plane of the cheeks, the eyebrows a bit higher, and the mouth a tad thinner. The eyes were the same startling shade of blue, but they had none of the lurking merriment that he remembered in Ianto's eyes. The hair was longer than Ianto had worn it, but much shorter than most Angels wore it, and held in a ponytail at the nape. A vivid memory of burying his face in the curve of that neck as he convulsed in sweet release surged upwards, and he squeezed his eyes shut to stop the tears.

“Why do you make them look…?” He trailed off helplessly.

“It seems to help if they stare at a familiar face in the mirror,” the Navigator said. “We retain as much of their physical appearances and attributes as possible.”

Jack turned off the monitor and watched as the giant screen became a soothing lake of simulated fire with great ribbons of brightly-colored gas swimming through it. After a while, he let his head drop back against the edge of the Navigator's nesting cushion. 

“I'm leading him to his death again,” he muttered. “Killing Ianto one more damn time.”

Ll'nau's eye stalks bent to the ground. “That is a real possibility, yes. But you're also the only chance he has for survival. Perhaps luck will be with you.”

Jack laughed bitterly. “That, Navigator, is the one thing I've never had. Does he know it's a suicide mission?”

“He does. Even if we hadn't told him, he's the best we've ever trained. Subterfuge would be useless.”

“All right. What's the plan?”

Ll'nau's eye stalks popped up. “You are accepting our proposal?”

“You knew I would. I've been chasing the 456 for centuries.” Jack reached into his backpack, extracted his wrist strap, and fastened around his wrist. “Like I said, what's the plan?”

“No plan as such. The next human planet in the current 456 vector is Freeman's Dream.” At Jack's grimace, the Navigator let loose the high pitched whirr that was Ylnagii laughter. “Yes, well. Usually, there would be nothing there to interest them. Unfortunately the Free Men got themselves into trouble with their Klickshee bankers and had to sell off part of their holdings to an religious émigré group from Earth. I believe they call themselves Beachy Amish?”

“Nice folk. Large families. Pacifists. Perfect targets for the 456.”

The Navigator crouched down until his eye stalks were level with Jack's head. “We were afraid of that. These people could be in a great deal of danger. The Free Men are not above doing some business with the 456.”

“So we have the tethered goats.” Jack activated the transmitter in his wrist strap. “Do we know who’s running the Free Men these days?”

Ll’nau whirred again. “As usual, their politics are… highly convoluted. The last communiqué from their Shareholders reported that the Prairie Falcon band leader had received the most votes at their most recent annual meeting. As to what that means…” A forepad shot up and waggled in imitation of the human so-so motion.

“Not a thing,” Jack said wearily. “Senior Shareholder is all about showing off. The important thing is who controls Security Enforcement.”

“That would be Lucken Espinosa.”

Jack laughed. “You mean Arabella Espinosa. Lucken hasn’t had an independent thought in his life. He went from his father’s control to his wife’s.”

He flipped open the security lid and tapped a quick sequence on his wrist strap. Ll’nau kept trying to examine the device while trying to appear absolutely uninterested. Finally, he couldn’t resist tilting his eye stalks directly at Jack’s wrist.

“We have heard a great deal about your control unit. It is unusual technology.”

“That it is, for this time and place.”

Eye and eye stalk met in understanding, then Ll'nau pulled himself back to a more neutral stance.

“What are you doing?”

“The only way to deal with the Free Men is from a position of what they see as strength. Doctor John Harper would not rate any respect in their eyes. Jack Harkness does.”

“Ah. And nobody would think twice about Captain Harkness’s new companion, since he has a penchant for travelling with beautiful young people.”

“Having a certain kind of reputation is useful from time to time.” Jack snapped the wrist strap's cover down. “The Toshiko will be here in three hours.”

Ll'nau shifted around slightly until he was staring at the monitor. “Do you know what that is, Captain?”

“The Rivenhell nebula.”

“So very few people know about it... and so few of us still alive to remember it. When I was a child, I would lay in the inner courtyard of my grandfather's compound and stare up at it for hours. Ir could be seen even in daylight. When we knew our pursuit of the 456 would take us away from home for centuries, we decorated our inner spaces with images of what we loved the most.” One single eye stalk turned to look at Jack. “May I ask an impertinent question?”

For the first time in what seemed like hours, Jack smiled. “Those are the one that will get you the most interesting answers.”

“Do you always name your designs after lost companions?” The long silence that followed the question seemed to make the Navigator uncomfortable, and he plunged on. “You do not need to answer, of course, but it is hard to miss if one knows anything about you. Your personal warship is, of course, the Toshiko. The multispecies refugee habitat at the Twelve Worlds nexus is the Gwen and Rhys. The mobile hospitals for use by emergency medical personnel in colony worlds are called Owens, and the diagnostic consoles they carry are Marthas. The solar wind racer in which you won the Eta Draconis challenge was the Rose. And yet...”

“You want to know why I never named anything the Ianto.”

The eye stalk swiveled away. “If I am threading on private ground, Captain, I do beg your pardon.”

“You are.” Jack sighed. “I'm not ready to release him yet, I suppose.”

The eye stalk swiveled back. “Are you saying you have come to terms with your other relationships but not with that one?”

“That's as good a way to say it as any.” Jack pushed himself up. “We better get moving. I want to be on my way tonight.”

Ll'nau raised itself up to its full size. In that position it reminded Jack of an old Earth illustration of a centaur, if horses were to have six legs and a crown of tentacles. “Let us go, then, and introduce you to Ianto.”

Jack barely managed to bring himself under control. “What did you say?”

“Surely, Captain, it's occurred to you that a being's name is its basis for self-recognition.” Ll'nau sounded uncharacteristically defensive. “The first thing we ask a newborn Angel is what it wishes to be called. And they always choose their own name.”