Fic: Past Imperfect. (3/6)
Dec. 17th, 2009 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silver_sunTitle: Past Imperfect. (3/6)
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, team.
Rating: M / 15
Warnings: Torture/interrogation scene in later part. (Not particularly graphic, no sexual element.)
Summary: Waking up injured and with no memory of the past few days is only the start of Jack's problems as part of his forgotten past comes back to haunt him. A/N: Set during in series two after Meat but before Adam.
Story starts here.
Part three:
“All right,” Gwen says, leaning forwards toward Jack from where she's sitting at the boardroom table. “Let’s treat this like a missing persons case. What do we know?”
“That I’m not missing.” It’s harsher than Jack had intended, but ever since waking up he's felt on edge, the frustration that he feels with himself for not being able to remember starting to spill over into anger.
“But you were,” Gwen says firmly, but kindly, giving him a reassuring smile. “You said it yourself you can’t remember what happened, maybe if we can reconstruct where you went and what you did up until the time you disappeared it might jog your memory.”
“Gwen's right, it can't hurt to try,” Ianto says encouragingly.
“I could get the CCTV footage for the morning you disappeared,” Tosh suggests.
“Alright,” Jack says, knowing that he has to find them something to do to take their minds off the fact that they hadn't looked for him sooner. Although he's accepted their apologies for assuming that he'd left them again, it still hurts that they don't know him better than that, and that despite everything that they've gone through together that they still don't trust him.
A few minutes later Tosh has hooked up the CCTV feed to one of the monitors in the boardroom.
It’s strange, Jack thinks, watching the footage of himself walking across the Plas, coat flapping in the breeze. Strange and more than a little disconcerting as he knows that in a matter of minutes something is going to happen to him; something that will leave him bloody and bruised, and with a weeks worth of missing memories.
“Looking good.” Jack forces a smile, not wanting any of his team to realise how apprehensive he’s feeling about what must come next.
“Very dashing,” Ianto says wryly, moving closer to Jack, until their shoulders are almost touching.
It’s a gesture of silent support that Jack has come to appreciate, especially since his return to Torchwood.
“There’s a bit of a black spot in the CCTV coverage at the edge of the Plas,” Tosh explains as she switches the feed to a different camera, this time to one on Pierhead Road.
Tosh scrolls through the footage until Jack comes into view. Walking fast through the heavy rain, Jack has almost reached the café when he stops and turns round quickly, hurrying over to an alleyway at the side of a nearby shop.
Watching, Jack feels the breath catch in his throat as the realisation that he’s about to witness his own abduction. On screen he has barely reached the entrance to the alley when he suddenly falls to the ground. There’s nothing to suggest why, one moment he’s rushing forward, the next he’s lying motionless on pavement, rain soaking through his clothes.
Ianto's hand tightens on Jack's shoulder as the footage keeps rolling, showing two men in black jumpsuit style uniforms, their faces partially obscured by visored helmets, step out of the alley. One prods Jack's still form with his boot.
"Special ops?" Gwen asks motioning to Tosh to pause the footage.
Jack shakes his head. There is something familiar about the men's uniforms, yet what it is remains stubbornly beyond recall.
"Aliens, then?" Gwen leans closer to the screen, before asking, "Can you zoom in?"
"Of course." Tosh taps a few keys, and the image of the two men, Jack held limp and possibly lifeless between them filling the screen. It's grainy, the image made up of oversized pixels. "I can try to get it a little clearer, but the quality of the CCTV on Pierhead Road is appalling," Tosh says apologetically. "I don't know if I'll be able to get anything useful from it."
Jack smiles at her. "You've done great, just play the rest."
Still holding Jack between them, the man on the left touches something on the side of his visor, then nods to his companion. There is a short flicker of static across the screen and then they're are gone.
"Teleporter," Jack says before anybody has a chance to ask. "I think we can rule out special ops, well Earth based ones anyway."
"What do we do now?" Gwen asks looking at the paused footage of the now empty alleyway. "They could be anywhere, Jack. They could take any of us."
"Or maybe they already got what they wanted," Jack says standing up, not wanting to have to admit in front of them that he really doesn't have any answers, not this time. He's as lost as they are.
"It's a long shot, but we could check the alleyway for residual energy readings, find out if they were using the Rift like John Hart did," Tosh suggests. “There are a couple of new algorithms that I've been working for separating out trace amounts of Rift energy from background levels. It wouldn't be too difficult to adapt it to look for other anomalous energy readings.”
"Looks like we have a plan," Jack says with a false cheerfulness. He knows that it's highly unlikely that they'll find anything, teleporters rarely leave much of an energy signature, and after the best part of a week the chance of picking it up are slim. However, Jack also knows that it'll keep them occupied, hopefully giving him time to remember just who took him and why, and there is always the remote possibility that they will actually find something.
"Gwen, you go with Tosh check out the alley." He turns to Ianto. "I need you to go over the Rift readings for the last week or so, check for anything that came in that we couldn't trace."
Ianto frowns, but says, "I'll get right on it. I'll be in the archives if you need me."
"What about you?" Gwen asks getting up. "Are you coming with us? See if going back to the alley jogs any memories?"
Jack shakes his head. He knows that it might work, but he's not keen on having an audience for it. "I know you and Tosh can handle it. I'm going to check on Owen, see if samples he took have come up with anything."
As soon as Tosh and Gwen have left to pick up the necessary monitoring equipment Jack sits back down; he knows that Owen will bring him the results once they are done.
Sore, his knee still aches slightly, and still no nearer in remembering what had happened to him or why the men's uniforms seemed familiar, Jack is still sat at the boardroom table when Ianto reappears carrying two mugs of coffee.
Sitting down next to Jack, he says, "Is there a reason you sent Gwen and Tosh off to do something that is probably pointless? Or is there something that I've missed?"
"They need to be doing something, it'll help them," Jack says wearily, not wanting to have this conversation.
"And what about you?" Ianto puts Jack's mug down in front of him. "What will help you?"
"Knowing what happened." Jack looks at the coffee. "But this is a start."
"We'll work it out." Sitting on the edge of the table Ianto leans towards Jack, his hand warm where it curls against the back of Jack's neck. "We usually do."
Jack smiles, glad of the distraction that Ianto is offering. “You know what else would help?”
“I've got a good idea,” Ianto says, before pressing his lips against Jack's.
The kiss is soft and warm, demanding nothing and offering everything, and Jack feels himself start to relax, letting Ianto soothe his frayed nerves.
Jack runs the smooth silk of Ianto's tie between his fingers, loosening it, his other hand unfastening the buttons on Ianto's waistcoat.
"Haven't you two ever heard of the phrase get a room?"
With a startled gasp Ianto pulls back from the kiss, leaving Jack with a view of Owen leaning against the door frame.
"This is a room, and don’t you ever knock?" Ianto sounds irritated and a little self concious as he straightens his tie and gets up off the table.
"Door was open," Owen says, walking over to them. "So you want to know what I found out or not?"
“And here was me thinking you'd come to join us.”
“In your dreams.” Owen sits down opposite Jack, and puts the report on the table in front of him.
Jack smiles at him. “They're such nice dreams too.”
Sat beside Jack, clothes neat again, Ianto tries not to laugh at Owen's expression.
“Very funny.” Owen opens the report.
“All right,” Jack says, wanting to get the conversation back on track, knowing that if he doesn't Ianto and Owen's relatively good natured snarking at each other might go on for some time. “What did you find out?”
“That somebody gave you an interesting little cocktail,” Owen says, running his finger down the list of drugs that the tests had picked up. “Stimulants, sedatives and a couple of psychoactives. Whoever dosed you up knew what they were doing.”
Jack frowns, not liking the sound of it. “What makes you say that?”
“A mix like that's a bloody good combination if you're trying to control somebody or get information out of them,” Owen says with grudging respect for whoever is behind it's abilities. “Keep someone on edge, disorientated, not even able to control when they are awake or asleep, eventually they'll crack tell whoever is giving them the stuff whatever they want to know.”
“I see,” Jack says, keeping his voice calm and steady, despite the fact that he feels neither. “Any reason why I don't remember any of this?”
“Given the amount of it still in your blood when we picked you up you'd have been out of your head on it most of the time.” Owen pauses for a moment then adds in a tone that could be considered sympathetic. “Anyway, with the beating they gave you you're lucky you don't remember.”
Kidnapped, drugged and beaten; Jack's not sure luck ever came into it.
Finishing his coffee, Ianto says, “I'll find out if there have been any break-ins at local pharmacies or hospital dispensaries.”
“Don't bother,” Owen says, pushing the report across the table to Jack. “They won't have any of them. One of the drugs, a psychoactive, is almost identical to one that we've got in the database as coming from the 24th century. Whoever this is they aren't from now and they came prepared.”
Since seeing the CCTV footage Jack has been expecting to hear an answer like this, it doesn't make it any less disappointing though. The fact that unless Tosh and Gwen find something in the alley then he's going to have to wait and hope for whoever took him to make another move, something that will alert him to their presence, is frustrating.
The silence created by the fact that none of them want to admit that this maybe all they ever find out is broken by the hiss-clunk of the cog door opening as Tosh and Gwen return.
Getting up, Jack goes over to the glass wall of the boardroom and looks down at them.
Seeing Jack, Gwen waves, indicating where Tosh has gone over to her workstation and is starting to upload the readings that they've taken. Then, smiling, she gives him a thumbs up.
Returning Gwen's smile, Jack hurries down from the boardroom to find out what they've found.
“There's definitely something,” Tosh says to Jack, as she puts on her glasses. “I'll need to run it through a couple of programs to filter out the background interference, but I should be able to produce something we can work with.”
Half an hour later and with Jack, Owen, Gwen and Ianto clustered around her workstation Tosh finishes processing the readings, and puts them up on screen.
Pointing at some of the energy spikes with her pen, Tosh says, “I think their teleport device is damaged, it seems to be leaking trace amounts of electro-spatial energy.”
“Brains and beauty.” Jack smiles, and puts a hand on Tosh's shoulder. “It's got to be a crack in the directional shielding unit. They probably don't even know it's there.”
“So we can track them?” Gwen asks hopefully.
“It's too degraded,” Tosh says, obviously not happy at being the one to have to break the bad news. “If I had a fresher reading, or even a second degraded one, I could narrow down the energy signature, then I'd be able to set up a tracer program.”
“And I know just where to find it,” Jack says, standing up, glad that it's time for action. “Time for a fieldtrip.”
“Where to?” Ianto asks. “There weren't any energy readings where we found you.” He thinks for a moment then adds, “Could they have fixed it?”
“No.” Jack shakes his head. “It's not a field repair, believe me. If it was broken a week ago it's broken now.”
“So why didn't we pick it up?”
“Looking in the wrong place,” Jack says, walking over to his office. “We need to go back to the house.”
“House? What house?” Owen asks, glancing over at Ianto to see if it means anything to him.
Jack stops, looking back at the mixture of confusion and concern on his team's faces, realising that he hasn't actually told them that he hadn't woken up at the phone box.
“I guess I forgot.”
“Are sure you're all ri...” Gwen starts to ask.
“I'm fine,” Jack says before she can finish, seeing exactly the same question in all their eyes. His tone, he hopes, will dissuade any further questions, as he adds, “I'll meet you at the SUV in ten minutes. I want to get this done before it gets dark.”
Jack can see that they are not exactly happy about it, and he regrets being so short with Gwen. Because while he does appreciate their concern, it's just that he doesn't like the fact that it makes him feel like they're looking at him like he's victim.
Before they can ask him any more questions, Jack goes into his office, and closes the door behind him.
Leaning back against the door, Jack sighs, and rubs a hand across his eyes, wondering why he hadn't told them. If it was just that it had slipped his mind or if its that keeping secrets from them has become such second nature that it no longer occurs to him to tell them anything.
There's no point dwelling on it, Jack decides. Going to his desk, he takes the Webley out of the desk drawer, and fastens it to his belt. The weight of it, and the feel of its old, worn leather case, is reassuring.
Feeling more in control again, Jack gives one last glance at the empty coat stand in the corner of his office, before going down to the garage to wait for them.
Part four.
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, team.
Rating: M / 15
Warnings: Torture/interrogation scene in later part. (Not particularly graphic, no sexual element.)
Summary: Waking up injured and with no memory of the past few days is only the start of Jack's problems as part of his forgotten past comes back to haunt him. A/N: Set during in series two after Meat but before Adam.
Story starts here.
Part three:
“All right,” Gwen says, leaning forwards toward Jack from where she's sitting at the boardroom table. “Let’s treat this like a missing persons case. What do we know?”
“That I’m not missing.” It’s harsher than Jack had intended, but ever since waking up he's felt on edge, the frustration that he feels with himself for not being able to remember starting to spill over into anger.
“But you were,” Gwen says firmly, but kindly, giving him a reassuring smile. “You said it yourself you can’t remember what happened, maybe if we can reconstruct where you went and what you did up until the time you disappeared it might jog your memory.”
“Gwen's right, it can't hurt to try,” Ianto says encouragingly.
“I could get the CCTV footage for the morning you disappeared,” Tosh suggests.
“Alright,” Jack says, knowing that he has to find them something to do to take their minds off the fact that they hadn't looked for him sooner. Although he's accepted their apologies for assuming that he'd left them again, it still hurts that they don't know him better than that, and that despite everything that they've gone through together that they still don't trust him.
A few minutes later Tosh has hooked up the CCTV feed to one of the monitors in the boardroom.
It’s strange, Jack thinks, watching the footage of himself walking across the Plas, coat flapping in the breeze. Strange and more than a little disconcerting as he knows that in a matter of minutes something is going to happen to him; something that will leave him bloody and bruised, and with a weeks worth of missing memories.
“Looking good.” Jack forces a smile, not wanting any of his team to realise how apprehensive he’s feeling about what must come next.
“Very dashing,” Ianto says wryly, moving closer to Jack, until their shoulders are almost touching.
It’s a gesture of silent support that Jack has come to appreciate, especially since his return to Torchwood.
“There’s a bit of a black spot in the CCTV coverage at the edge of the Plas,” Tosh explains as she switches the feed to a different camera, this time to one on Pierhead Road.
Tosh scrolls through the footage until Jack comes into view. Walking fast through the heavy rain, Jack has almost reached the café when he stops and turns round quickly, hurrying over to an alleyway at the side of a nearby shop.
Watching, Jack feels the breath catch in his throat as the realisation that he’s about to witness his own abduction. On screen he has barely reached the entrance to the alley when he suddenly falls to the ground. There’s nothing to suggest why, one moment he’s rushing forward, the next he’s lying motionless on pavement, rain soaking through his clothes.
Ianto's hand tightens on Jack's shoulder as the footage keeps rolling, showing two men in black jumpsuit style uniforms, their faces partially obscured by visored helmets, step out of the alley. One prods Jack's still form with his boot.
"Special ops?" Gwen asks motioning to Tosh to pause the footage.
Jack shakes his head. There is something familiar about the men's uniforms, yet what it is remains stubbornly beyond recall.
"Aliens, then?" Gwen leans closer to the screen, before asking, "Can you zoom in?"
"Of course." Tosh taps a few keys, and the image of the two men, Jack held limp and possibly lifeless between them filling the screen. It's grainy, the image made up of oversized pixels. "I can try to get it a little clearer, but the quality of the CCTV on Pierhead Road is appalling," Tosh says apologetically. "I don't know if I'll be able to get anything useful from it."
Jack smiles at her. "You've done great, just play the rest."
Still holding Jack between them, the man on the left touches something on the side of his visor, then nods to his companion. There is a short flicker of static across the screen and then they're are gone.
"Teleporter," Jack says before anybody has a chance to ask. "I think we can rule out special ops, well Earth based ones anyway."
"What do we do now?" Gwen asks looking at the paused footage of the now empty alleyway. "They could be anywhere, Jack. They could take any of us."
"Or maybe they already got what they wanted," Jack says standing up, not wanting to have to admit in front of them that he really doesn't have any answers, not this time. He's as lost as they are.
"It's a long shot, but we could check the alleyway for residual energy readings, find out if they were using the Rift like John Hart did," Tosh suggests. “There are a couple of new algorithms that I've been working for separating out trace amounts of Rift energy from background levels. It wouldn't be too difficult to adapt it to look for other anomalous energy readings.”
"Looks like we have a plan," Jack says with a false cheerfulness. He knows that it's highly unlikely that they'll find anything, teleporters rarely leave much of an energy signature, and after the best part of a week the chance of picking it up are slim. However, Jack also knows that it'll keep them occupied, hopefully giving him time to remember just who took him and why, and there is always the remote possibility that they will actually find something.
"Gwen, you go with Tosh check out the alley." He turns to Ianto. "I need you to go over the Rift readings for the last week or so, check for anything that came in that we couldn't trace."
Ianto frowns, but says, "I'll get right on it. I'll be in the archives if you need me."
"What about you?" Gwen asks getting up. "Are you coming with us? See if going back to the alley jogs any memories?"
Jack shakes his head. He knows that it might work, but he's not keen on having an audience for it. "I know you and Tosh can handle it. I'm going to check on Owen, see if samples he took have come up with anything."
As soon as Tosh and Gwen have left to pick up the necessary monitoring equipment Jack sits back down; he knows that Owen will bring him the results once they are done.
Sore, his knee still aches slightly, and still no nearer in remembering what had happened to him or why the men's uniforms seemed familiar, Jack is still sat at the boardroom table when Ianto reappears carrying two mugs of coffee.
Sitting down next to Jack, he says, "Is there a reason you sent Gwen and Tosh off to do something that is probably pointless? Or is there something that I've missed?"
"They need to be doing something, it'll help them," Jack says wearily, not wanting to have this conversation.
"And what about you?" Ianto puts Jack's mug down in front of him. "What will help you?"
"Knowing what happened." Jack looks at the coffee. "But this is a start."
"We'll work it out." Sitting on the edge of the table Ianto leans towards Jack, his hand warm where it curls against the back of Jack's neck. "We usually do."
Jack smiles, glad of the distraction that Ianto is offering. “You know what else would help?”
“I've got a good idea,” Ianto says, before pressing his lips against Jack's.
The kiss is soft and warm, demanding nothing and offering everything, and Jack feels himself start to relax, letting Ianto soothe his frayed nerves.
Jack runs the smooth silk of Ianto's tie between his fingers, loosening it, his other hand unfastening the buttons on Ianto's waistcoat.
"Haven't you two ever heard of the phrase get a room?"
With a startled gasp Ianto pulls back from the kiss, leaving Jack with a view of Owen leaning against the door frame.
"This is a room, and don’t you ever knock?" Ianto sounds irritated and a little self concious as he straightens his tie and gets up off the table.
"Door was open," Owen says, walking over to them. "So you want to know what I found out or not?"
“And here was me thinking you'd come to join us.”
“In your dreams.” Owen sits down opposite Jack, and puts the report on the table in front of him.
Jack smiles at him. “They're such nice dreams too.”
Sat beside Jack, clothes neat again, Ianto tries not to laugh at Owen's expression.
“Very funny.” Owen opens the report.
“All right,” Jack says, wanting to get the conversation back on track, knowing that if he doesn't Ianto and Owen's relatively good natured snarking at each other might go on for some time. “What did you find out?”
“That somebody gave you an interesting little cocktail,” Owen says, running his finger down the list of drugs that the tests had picked up. “Stimulants, sedatives and a couple of psychoactives. Whoever dosed you up knew what they were doing.”
Jack frowns, not liking the sound of it. “What makes you say that?”
“A mix like that's a bloody good combination if you're trying to control somebody or get information out of them,” Owen says with grudging respect for whoever is behind it's abilities. “Keep someone on edge, disorientated, not even able to control when they are awake or asleep, eventually they'll crack tell whoever is giving them the stuff whatever they want to know.”
“I see,” Jack says, keeping his voice calm and steady, despite the fact that he feels neither. “Any reason why I don't remember any of this?”
“Given the amount of it still in your blood when we picked you up you'd have been out of your head on it most of the time.” Owen pauses for a moment then adds in a tone that could be considered sympathetic. “Anyway, with the beating they gave you you're lucky you don't remember.”
Kidnapped, drugged and beaten; Jack's not sure luck ever came into it.
Finishing his coffee, Ianto says, “I'll find out if there have been any break-ins at local pharmacies or hospital dispensaries.”
“Don't bother,” Owen says, pushing the report across the table to Jack. “They won't have any of them. One of the drugs, a psychoactive, is almost identical to one that we've got in the database as coming from the 24th century. Whoever this is they aren't from now and they came prepared.”
Since seeing the CCTV footage Jack has been expecting to hear an answer like this, it doesn't make it any less disappointing though. The fact that unless Tosh and Gwen find something in the alley then he's going to have to wait and hope for whoever took him to make another move, something that will alert him to their presence, is frustrating.
The silence created by the fact that none of them want to admit that this maybe all they ever find out is broken by the hiss-clunk of the cog door opening as Tosh and Gwen return.
Getting up, Jack goes over to the glass wall of the boardroom and looks down at them.
Seeing Jack, Gwen waves, indicating where Tosh has gone over to her workstation and is starting to upload the readings that they've taken. Then, smiling, she gives him a thumbs up.
Returning Gwen's smile, Jack hurries down from the boardroom to find out what they've found.
“There's definitely something,” Tosh says to Jack, as she puts on her glasses. “I'll need to run it through a couple of programs to filter out the background interference, but I should be able to produce something we can work with.”
Half an hour later and with Jack, Owen, Gwen and Ianto clustered around her workstation Tosh finishes processing the readings, and puts them up on screen.
Pointing at some of the energy spikes with her pen, Tosh says, “I think their teleport device is damaged, it seems to be leaking trace amounts of electro-spatial energy.”
“Brains and beauty.” Jack smiles, and puts a hand on Tosh's shoulder. “It's got to be a crack in the directional shielding unit. They probably don't even know it's there.”
“So we can track them?” Gwen asks hopefully.
“It's too degraded,” Tosh says, obviously not happy at being the one to have to break the bad news. “If I had a fresher reading, or even a second degraded one, I could narrow down the energy signature, then I'd be able to set up a tracer program.”
“And I know just where to find it,” Jack says, standing up, glad that it's time for action. “Time for a fieldtrip.”
“Where to?” Ianto asks. “There weren't any energy readings where we found you.” He thinks for a moment then adds, “Could they have fixed it?”
“No.” Jack shakes his head. “It's not a field repair, believe me. If it was broken a week ago it's broken now.”
“So why didn't we pick it up?”
“Looking in the wrong place,” Jack says, walking over to his office. “We need to go back to the house.”
“House? What house?” Owen asks, glancing over at Ianto to see if it means anything to him.
Jack stops, looking back at the mixture of confusion and concern on his team's faces, realising that he hasn't actually told them that he hadn't woken up at the phone box.
“I guess I forgot.”
“Are sure you're all ri...” Gwen starts to ask.
“I'm fine,” Jack says before she can finish, seeing exactly the same question in all their eyes. His tone, he hopes, will dissuade any further questions, as he adds, “I'll meet you at the SUV in ten minutes. I want to get this done before it gets dark.”
Jack can see that they are not exactly happy about it, and he regrets being so short with Gwen. Because while he does appreciate their concern, it's just that he doesn't like the fact that it makes him feel like they're looking at him like he's victim.
Before they can ask him any more questions, Jack goes into his office, and closes the door behind him.
Leaning back against the door, Jack sighs, and rubs a hand across his eyes, wondering why he hadn't told them. If it was just that it had slipped his mind or if its that keeping secrets from them has become such second nature that it no longer occurs to him to tell them anything.
There's no point dwelling on it, Jack decides. Going to his desk, he takes the Webley out of the desk drawer, and fastens it to his belt. The weight of it, and the feel of its old, worn leather case, is reassuring.
Feeling more in control again, Jack gives one last glance at the empty coat stand in the corner of his office, before going down to the garage to wait for them.
Part four.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 09:01 am (UTC)