Chapter Text
Four and a half months.
Four and a half long months, and Jack had been gone four of them. It had been hard for everyone, but it was harder for Ianto. While the others were without a boss and leader and would be for seven and half months more until Torchwood One sent a replacement for Jack. Ianto had been without a boss, leader and lover. A lover that he really needed right now.
‘He’s found the right kind of Doctor.’
That’s what Gwen said after watching the CCTV of Jack going willingly into the blue police box.
The only good thing about Jack being gone was that they only had to deal with was Weevils. Nothing had landed near, or in, Cardiff and nothing had come through the Rift. But that was a small consolation prize for having no Jack.
The right kind of Doctor. He had met the right kind of Doctor at Torchwood One. Good looking, smart, funny. Ianto could see why Jack went. Why stay with him when he could have the Doctor, the Doctor that Jack had spent hours looking for and even had his hand in a jar and his 3D glass on his desk.
Ianto wondered if Jack would have been sooooo willing and happy to go if he had heard what Ianto had to say and understood what had happened that night and how he hadn’t meant for it to happen.
After Torchwood One, with all those people dead, murdered, he had applied for Torchwood Three, even though he’d be even lower on the ladder than before and paid even less, at least he would be home in Cardiff. It also meant that he could keep a low profile and hide Lisa.
He had hated Jack after killing her. Not so much for killing her, but for how he did it and how Jack handled him during and after the incident. He had always known that Lisa was dead and that she would kill everyone, even him, but he loved her with all of his heart and he couldn’t let her go, at least not without trying to save her.
After Mary, Tosh came to him and said that she finally really understood why he did what he did with Lisa. Understood that when you love someone so much that you believe the lies, stop seeing the flaws and just see the person they were or the person you saw them as.
She also understood what it is like to be in a crowded room and still feel alone.
Tosh and he had become closer after that, and it was nice to be able to talk about the good things about Lisa, like how she was and what she liked. It was nice to hear someone else talk about there their loved ones. And even nicer to talk to someone about Jack and the current problems he was having.
After Owen had apologized to him about being Jack’s ‘Part-time shag’, and he apologized about shooting him, things started to get better between them. Owen tried to keep his desk and the Hub tidy and tried to be a bit more sensitive about things, not just with him, but with Tosh as well.
One morning, after really seeing how close Tosh and he had come, Owen had asked what they did and what they talked about during their breaks and after work. They told him that they talked about old loves, like Mary and Lisa. New loves, like Jack, and normal things that friends talk about and how after work they would go to a pub, club, cinema or they just went home with each other and cooked or ordered in and talked. Owen then askedslightly anxious if one more could join in and Tosh and he were happy to let him come and talk with them.
After finding out what was wrong with him, instead of going away in disgust like he thought they would, it had only brought them closer than before.
Only they didn’t know the whole story. He didn’t think that they would stay after hearing it all. If Jack knew how close they had become. He thought he’d have a heart attack.
The only person who wasn’t in their tight little group was Gwen. After Jack had gone and finding out about his issues, she had gone out of her way to be mean to him. No one understood how she could act like she was the only one that had been abandoned and that Jack’s leaving was all his fault. They had known Jack for months before her, almost a year, and Jack had been his lover. Not hers.
He didn’t need the pendantthat Mary had given Tosh to know that Gwen thought it was his fault that Jack went willingly.
…Maybe it was.
It felt like it was, and he certainly thought it was. Maybe if had had been stronger it wouldn’t have happened and nothing would be wrong between Jack and him. And maybe Jack would have said goodbye and promised that he would be back before he left them.
Maybe Gwen was right and Tosh and Owen were wrong and it was his entire fault and he should just get rid of the problem and Jack would come back.
But he couldn’t get rid of it. He’d seen it, heard it, and felt it; Owen and Tosh have also heard and seen it. And even though he knew what would happen to him, he just couldn’t get rid of it, because there was always a small part of him that hoped Jack would came back, and hear his story, and come to love it.
But even if Jack didn’t come back, he knew Tosh and even Owen would look after it and love it.
He could still remember the first time he met Captain Jack Harkness. Tall, handsome, gorgeous smile and beautiful blue eyes. It was his first day, and after following the directions on the letter that had told him that he had gotten the job, the letter had also told him that a ‘Captain Harkness’ would meet him in the cover-up tours office at 9.00am.
He’d been nervous about meeting him and even more so about what could happen to Lisa if something went wrong, but luckily, nothing had.
After being told that his job entailed manning the reception desk, administrating the computer systems, serving coffee and tea, receiving reports and cleaning up loose ends -such as covering up deaths and destroying information that could trigger "ret conned" memories, he was asked if he would like to come down into the Hub and meet the others in the team.
After a few weeks, he had gotten use to the Hub. Tosh had been quiet, very quiet to start off with, but after going to the pub with Suzie, Owen and Jack a few times she started to be louder. But he always thought what was just because she was smitten with Jack and Owen, and that the computers helped. She also only drank tea; tea made from tea leafs and not bags.
Owen had been loud, too loud, and very messy and very rude to him. But like Tosh, after going to the pub with Suzie, Owen and Jack a few times he toned down the noise but was still messing about and rude to him. He drank coffee but sometimes tea. Suzie had been hard working, smart and obsessive. That meant that she would often be more closed off then the others, but like the others, she loosened up after going to the pub. She had only drunk coffee, for coffee beans, never instant coffee.
And Jack…
Jack had been very hard to describe, he was hard to describe now. Jack had been cocky, funny and very sexual. After a while Jack had started joking that the only reason that he was hired was that he could make good coffee, and that he looked good in a suite. He in turn started saying, jokingly that he was being harassed in the workplace, only to have Jack say that he would harass him anyplace he wanted.
They still did that, and Jack was still like that, but he began to see that there was a lot more toJack and the way he works. But obviously he didn’t know him that well. He didn’t see that he would just leave him without so much as a backwards glance or goodbye.
It was going to be a long few months, not just hard on him, but on Owen and Tosh, who would be left to deal with the mess that he would leave left behind.
But he knew that they would try and help with what he asked and if they couldn’t, he trusted them to do what they felt was right for all of them.
And as he stood in the boardroom, looking down at the Hub, watching Tosh and Owen sit together looking at the computer with great interest, he slowly rubbed his stomach softly with his right hand, as he thought back on how he got into this situation in the first place, and how he somehow wasn’t in it.