Title: The Angel of Death (4/?)

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.

Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here


“Did I do something wrong?”

Jack looked up from his reading to see Ianto in the doorway, dressed in a looser, softer version of his tai chi trousers and a plain black t-shirt neatly tucked in. He was barefoot, and his toes flexed against the coolness of the metal grating.

“You should wear shoes.The corridors are always cold.”

Ianto shrugged. “It’s not any worse than what we encounter during training. May I have an answer? I need to know what conversational taboos to avoid. Otherwise our cover story isn't going to be very believable, not with you withdrawing into Captain mode every time I trip a hidden wire.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Ianto.” Sighing, Jack closed the oversized book and set it aside. “What you said brought back memories of someone I cared for very much a long time ago. Come in. You might as well learn your way around the control room.”

Ianto padded in, looking around curiously. The Toshiko’s control room was designed as a semicircle with curving walls that fashioned a half dome high overhead. Thin ribs carved to resemble flowering vines supported the structure. In the center of the room, a waist-high column with a lotus-shaped capital supported the navigation control panels. To the left of the column, in an alcove tucked between two of the ribs, a Chula pilot's chair and a glass-fronted bookcase had been bolted to the deck.

“Unusual.” Ianto murmured. “You design as much for beauty as for utility.”

“I adapted the look of a ship I travelled in once. Just a bit less.... random.”

Ianto ran his hand over the edge of one of the navigation panels. “The briefing documents I received suggest that this ship carries Gallifreyan technology. The consensus is that it was stolen, although there are hints here and there of more interesting scenarios.”

Jack laughed. “That's a nice way to put it.”

He hesitated for a moment, then walked over to the column, motioning to the young man to join him. He ran his fingers around the petals of one of the lotus blossoms and then pressed gently. A thin plate slid away. The interior of the column was completely filled with what at first glance appeared to be an intricately carved piece of white jade.

Ianto knelt by the column, staring into the light as if hypnotized. “Is that...”

“A TARDIS coral. I found it and I've been caring for it since it was smaller than the palm of my hand. It is not yet quite ready, but it will be soon, I think.”

As they watched the coral extruded a delicate branch and curved it around a thicker one. They looked at each other and smiled. Jack pressed on the lotus petal again and the plate slid back into place.

“There is stolen technology in this ship, but that’s not it.” Grinning fiercely, he pointed at the alcove. “Can you think of a reason why a ship with navigation control panels should also have a Chula pilot’s chair in it?”

“Our records show that your first ship was a Chula warship. I assumed that it was for memory’s sake. You do seem to…”

Ianto broke off as the alcove began to glow. An elaborate tracery appeared on the curving walls. After a few seconds it detached itself from the metal and built and wrapped itself around the chair. Where the strands touched each other multi-colored lights sparkled and danced.

“An organic computer,” Ianto breathed the words reverently. “Where in the Universe did you find it?”

“In Cardiff. Most people assume the Torchwood Hub in Cardiff was built to take advantage of the central location, but that wasn’t it at all. The Hub was built over the remains of a ship that came through the Rift a millennia before there was even a Cardiff. When we found it, the computer was still functional. I convinced them that it was merely a highly advanced piece of technology and that it couldn’t be removed without harming it. They built the Hub around it and grafted twentieth century computer technology onto it. A few centuries ago I went back and grabbed it from right under their nose.”

“Wouldn’t they have noticed the sudden drop in computing power?”

“I left a Habitat Management System in its place. Besides, now that Torchwood is respectably public, the Hub is more a museum than anything else.”

Ianto burst into delighted laughter, and the sound of it made Jack's heart beat a little faster. That was one of his most precious memories: Ianto's full-throated enjoyment of the amusing and the ridiculous, even in the middle of a crisis. For several decades after Ianto's death, Jack had used that memory to find his own sense of humor. Ianto would have laughed himself silly had become a kind of mantra that had led him out of despair a great many times.

And those memories had no place in the here and now. Taking a deep breath, he motioned towards the control column. “I've loaded some information on Freeman's Dream that might not have made it into your briefing.”

He watched as Ianto accessed the data. It was obvious that he was familiar with most of the Toshiko's controls. He made a mental note to review his security arrangements.

As Ianto pressed the last button in the sequence, a hologram screen appeared in midair. It was split into two sections. On the left-hand side there was a schematic of an asteroid field. On the upper right hand side, the screen showed a head and shoulders image of a woman. She had blonde hair piled up on top of her head in an intricately braided style, widely-spaced green eyes, and a rather soft smile. Below her, in the lower right hand side, the image was that of a man. He was also blond, rather handsome, and his face was tightly arrogant.

“Don't be deceived,” Jack told Ianto. “Of the two, the woman is the most dangerous.”

“That is not a commonly held belief.”

“I know. Arabella Espinosa is very clever. She works behind the scenes.”

Ianto eyed him speculatively. “Was she one of your... participants?”

“Good lord, no. I don't care for sex as competition and Arabella is the sort that always has to win.”

“So she made a play for you and you turned her down.” Ianto smiled at him. “That may be awkward.”

Jack shook his head. “I was very careful to let her save face, and she knows it.”

“And him?” Ianto pointed at the man. “Is he content to play second fiddle?”

“Lucken is bright enough to know he doesn't have the brains. Besides, they've worked out an efficient division of labor. He's the enforcement arm and she's management.”

“Ah.” Ianto enlarged the map to fill the screen. “This is Freeman's Dream? I didn't know there was a map.”

“There isn't. Officially, I mean. Tosh drew that one up.”

Ianto stared at him wide-eyed. “The ship?”

Jack laughed. “No. Toshiko is the ship. Tosh is the computer. I had the ship for about two centuries before I went back for her.”

“That would be Toshiko Sato? The computer genius who adapted the time bubble technology to create protective force fields?”

“That's my Tosh.”

“I've read all her papers. She was considerably ahead of her time in cybernetics, wasn't she?” Ianto stepped closer to the pilot's chair. “What she could do with a computer was downright obscene.”

This time Jack was able to control himself. “That it was.”

He watched as Ianto reached out and touched one of the twinkling lights. The glowing net shivered and then a strand wrapped itself around Ianto's finger and flowed up to his wrist. Ianto looked back at Jack, giggling.

“It tickles!”

“She's getting to know you. She'll sample your DNA and create a biohologram of you inside herself. Once she does that, she'll spend a lot of time watching you. Learning your likes and dislikes, studying your reactions in all sorts of situations. Everything is incorporated into the biohol until she has as close to a simulacra of you as can be assembled.”

“It sounds a bit...” Ianto stopped, frowned. “I don't know that I like to be that well known.”

“Ianto, one sentience cannot know another fully no matter how much it studies it. The biohol is used to help in medical diagnosis or to track you if you go missing, that sort of thing.”

“Oh. Maybe I will study her and make my own construct.”

Jack laughed. “She'll like that. But not tonight. It's late and tomorrow we start working on our con.”

“That sounds interesting.” Ianto hesitated. “Can I ask where you sleep?”

Jack pointed to the right of the navigation column. A second alcove appeared, directly opposite to the pilot's chair. A small bunk had been fitted inside, with a locker beneath it. Ianto raised his eyebrows.

“That's probably the most uncomfortable bedroom I've ever seen.”

“I don't sleep much anyway. Good night, Ianto.”

“Good night, Jack.”

Jack watched him leave, then turned back towards the pilot's chair.

“Jack.” The voice was achingly familiar.

“Yes, Tosh?”

“My databanks have identified our passenger as Ianto Jones.” Toshiko was clearly bewildered. “That's Ianto. Our Ianto.”

“I know, Tosh. I know.”