Fic: The Essential Condition of Life 2/3
Title: Mutual Service: The Essential Condition of Life 2/3
Author: Kei
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Set in the Mutual Service verse. I highly recommend you read at least that that first, or this won't make much sense.
Summary: Ianto's resurrection has consequences, consequences that the Doctor has taken enough interest in to travel to Cardiff for.


In a house in St Fagans, Mabyn Cromwell was knelt on the kitchen floor, sobbing. Her Aunt Una had died three weeks ago, but she'd seen her just now, weeding the garden outside. For a moment it had been as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds. She could see things getting better for her, she really could - there was an opening in management training at work, and wasn't everyone always saying she'd be perfect for that?

But Una was gone now, and that momentary relief from pain was gone.

*

"Well, Jack." Owen peeled off his gloves, tossing them into a half-full rubbish bin as Martha did the same. He liked Martha. She was smart and good to work with. "Near as we can tell... he fell out a window."

"You're a medical genius, Owen," Jack replied, and Owen graced him with a gesture that was recognised as obscene across seventeen systems. Then he scowled as the Doctor came past him, holding something that glowed blue and waving it around over the man's corpse. Bloody hell, this was his area, couldn't anyone understand that?

He could recognise beeping, though, whether or not he had a clue what the equipment actually was, and he put off his bitching to wait for an explanation instead. "Hmm," the Doctor said, and looked off into the distance for a moment. "Well then! Nice place you've got here."

Owen stared at him for a moment, trying to decide whether to take him seriously or not. Given that he was one of Jack's friends, it was sort of a tough call; figured Captain Costume would hang out with complete loonies, and explained his fixation on the Teaboy, too. "This is an autopsy room," he pointed out after a moment.

"I can see that! And a beauty of an autopsy room it is."

Martha giggled, moving to sit on the steps below Jack's legs, and broke into a sudden yawn which she covered with her hand, looking embarrassed. "Christ, it's not that late, is it?"

"Time lag," Jack explained knowledgeably. "You know, I have a--"

"Jack." The Doctor gave him a quelling look, and though he didn't look particularly repentant, he didn't continue the offer.

Owen wished he could do that. God knew it'd do them some good to have someone around who could keep Jack in line. "Bloody hell, Harkness, do you ever stop?" he muttered, and rolled his eyes when another significant look from the Doctor prevented Jack from saying... whatever he was going to say. "Well, I'm going to go see if there's any more coffee. Bit of friendly advice, Martha. You'd be better asking Jones if you need somewhere to crash. He's less likely to hump your leg and he knows just about everything about this damn place anyway."

He got a grateful smile for his effort, which he figured was about fair considering he'd almost complimented the Teaboy just then. "Nah, I reckon I'll just go back to the TARDIS. Feel free not to wake me for the running, Doctor. You promised me a holiday!"

The Doctor only grinned at her, a slightly manic expression that made him look something less like human and more like a living flesh troll doll. "You'll just miss all the fun!"

Bonkers, Owen decided, half-stomping up the stairs out of the room. Both of them, utterly bonkers.

*

Ianto was most definitely not sulking in the Archives. Quite the contrary, he was using his mastery of the alphabet and knowledge of those areas of the large area that diverged wildly from any rational recognised system of organisation to search for anything they might have missed, anything that could help them. Twice so far he had seen ghosts, one looking to be a woman from the sixties, the other a man in early 20th century clothing, and to his surprise he'd found his heart beating faster not through fear or apprehension, but a small, secret thrill at these glimpses into the past. Torchwood had been around for so long... How much of that time had Jack seen? He hadn't told Ianto that, so many of his secrets still locked inside, but there was always the promise of learning more of them.

Finally he gave up, heading upstairs and focusing his hearing for the sounds of voices. With two extra people in the Hub the main floor seemed almost merry compared to the vast, lonely Archives.

He was surprised, when he emerged, to almost bump into the Doctor where he was staring up into the heights of the Hub, tacky cardboard 3-D glasses settled on his ears. Looking up himself, he realised what the Doctor was looking at - the pterodactyl swooping through the air, showing off for the stranger.

"Myfanwy," he said.

The Doctor looked at him, startled. "Eh?"

"Her name. Myfanwy." He gestured upwards as though there could be any more confusion, and was spitefully - momentarily - tempted to call the creature down for a treat. He refrained only because the possibility existed that the Doctor would actually enjoy almost being landed on by a gigantic, long-extinct carnivore with enormous claws. He seemed perverse like that.

Peering at him now, the Doctor pulled off his glasses, shoving them in a pocket. "No one ever said how you died. --Now that's something I don't get to say every day!"

His honest glee at the statement rankled slightly, and Ianto wished he had something to occupy his hands. Instead he shoved them in his pockets, turning away slightly. "It's not a topic of conversation."

"Ooh, no, I suppose not. Still, you survived Canary Wharf."

"No one survived Canary Wharf." He hadn't intended to say it and the admission surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise the Doctor. Now that he'd said it, though, he met the Timelord's eyes. He should be told about the mess he'd left behind. "We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

It was strange how quickly the Doctor's facial expressions changed, from curiosity to excitement to solemnity. "Jack know you feel like that?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "We're working on it." He turned fully now, heading back to the kitchenette, and if he thought he heard the Doctor's soft apology, well, his footsteps on the metal grating echoed strangely in the air.

*

The investigation stalled not long after and one by one everyone filtered out, going home to bed or out to wherever it was they went at night. When Ianto left the main Hub for his living quarters the Doctor and Jack were still sitting in his office, catching up.

He woke early. The base was quiet, but there were dirty dishes in the kitchenette, and he added cleaning them up into his morning routine. And it was routine now, one task after another that he could work through efficiently, quietly, without really thinking about it. It was only when he sat down to run through the non-urgent messages and alerts that had come in overnight that he really focused on what he was doing, sorting them into categories of useless, possible, pass on to Jack.

There were footsteps behind him, and he finished reading and cataloging the last message before looking up - and then quickly down again when he realised Jack was only half-dressed. "Morning, sir," he greeted him, rising. "Coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks Ianto. These come in last night?"

"About half of them are from the police station. Some were obviously overreactions. I think they're a little spooked, to be honest." He raised his voice for the last so it would echo out to Jack as he poured their drinks, pulling some leftover Chinese out of the fridge for breakfast.

"Looks like they had at least five ghosts just in the precinct itself overnight." Something was beeping on the computer, and Ianto closed his eyes for a moment, trying to visualise what Jack was doing. Checking his email, probably - that was the sound of changing a log-in, which he wouldn't have to do for most tasks. He really had just rolled out of bed, then.

Ianto swallowed, arranging the breakfast things neatly on a tray to bring out. "Six, actually, one on two separate occasions. Look at the second most recent."

"Hm?" Jack took his coffee absently, sipping at it as he flipped back through the messages to the one Ianto was talking about. "What about it?"

The third container he looked in had some low mein that Toshiko hadn't eaten the day before. Perfect. "Sounds a bit emotional for an on-duty police officer. Spring roll?"

And of course wherever Jack came from didn't have a clue about proper manners, so now that his mind was on something else he just grabbed the roll and ate it with his fingers, getting grease all over them even as he typed at the computer station. Ianto winced a little and tried not to think about Jack spilling on himself. "He does a bit. Check it with Gwen when she comes in, she might wanna look into it." He snatched up another couple of rolls and took his coffee off back to his office, presumably to finish getting dressed.

Oh, that damnable, charming man.

*

And somewhere in Roath, as Maggie Smith sobbed to herself in loss, her husband walked to the wall safe, pulled out a gun, loaded it and shot himself in the head.

*

"Ooh, I love a meeting!" The Doctor beamed, hustling Martha into the cosy little briefing room where most of Jack's team was sitting around a table. There was coffee and tea ready and he could smell lingering traces of Chinese food, soy sauce and fried oil, as well as the combined mint and citrus and vanilla and musk of twenty first century hygiene. Brilliant. Utterly brilliant.

"Morning, Doctor," Jack said. "How'd you get in?"

"Gwen Cooper let me in. Mind you... she does look awfully familiar." He frowned, trying to remember where he'd seen her, probably at a different age, or maybe someone else who just looked like her. Something in the jawline and eyes, maybe. He had been to Cardiff several times. "Never mind, what's all this? Ah, research, excellent! Never do research, me, mostly just improvise. Usually seems to work out. That's the problem with plans, something always goes wrong. So! What've we found out?"

Behind him, Gwen hurried into the room with another sheaf of papers and a, "Don't start without me!" that made him realise his demand for information had probably been rude.

Jawline and eyes, he thought-- oh! "Gwyneth!"

She looked at him, puzzled, as she sat. "No... Gwen."

"I've met one of your ancestors, I have. Lovely girl. Saved the world. Bit of a family tradition now, I suppose."

"Speaking of," Jack interrupted loudly, and Martha laughed, low and quiet. "Gwen, what've you got?"

"Ianto was right," she said, rifling through her papers for one in particular and smiling at the aforementioned as he set her coffee in front of her. "We're getting increasing emotional disturbances in the people who've seen the ghosts. Highs when they appear, then crashing afterwards."

"Some kind of psychic field?" Toshiko, who as it turned out was not a doctor but a computer technician, was tapping at some kind of basic handheld system - though it was still far and beyond what Earth ought to have in this time period. He was certain he recognised components in the Torchwood computers from several centuries in the future, not to mention at least a dozen different planets. And it wasn't as though it was all Jack, either, because some of them had clearly been in place for far longer than he claimed to have been in control for. Even though he couldn't help but disapprove on principle, he almost admired them at the same time - those limited, primitive little minds, managing to put all this together well before their time.

Owen nodded thoughtfully. "Pretty short range. Do they put off any readings we can trace?"

"Not that I've seen so far, but we only have the right equipment inside the Hub, and the first three we saw were out of camera range. There are quite a few places downstairs that aren't covered by CCTV. I rolled back the footage from last night and two more appeared, but because no one was around they don't seem to have made any connection."

A strange sort of expression filtered across Ianto's face when Toshiko mentioned the CCTV blind spots, so quickly that the Doctor thought it quite likely that no one else had noticed. Odd. But then, this place seemed full of secrets, perfect for them in fact. Secrets and traumas, because they all were so beautifully broken, this team of Jack's. Did he seek out the fractured, wounded minds and attempt to give them purpose, or was it the purpose that broke them? The Doctor would have believed either.

Across the room from him Martha frowned. "But what are they doing? Feeding off the energy? Because then they'd be getting stronger... lasting longer."

"The emotional effects seem to be getting more extreme," offered Gwen.

"Sounds like a lot of bloody theorising to me," Owen replied. "What are we going to do, sit around the Hub and wait for one to turn up so we can scan it?"

There was a pause as they all looked at him. "Actually," Jack said after a moment, slowly; "we are."

*

To increase their chances (and to make sure that they all weren't struck by an otherworldly melancholy at once) they spread out, settling down into various places around the base. It really was a strange little place, nothing at all like Torchwood Tower's sleek white lines and glass. Cool and solid, it seemed to be built into the very foundations of Cardiff, and the Doctor could feel the energy of the Rift all around him, in every brick, every fixture, every drop of water. Seemed an odd choice for Jack, who'd been one of the few people he'd allowed to tinker with the TARDIS. Too... basic.

He had the feeling he'd been put in this part of the Archives deliberately. There didn't seem to be anything particularly outstanding in any of the boxes or shelves, though there were some neat little toys, and he found himself perfectly content to rummage through the area studying their collection. All things that had fallen through the Rift, as he understood it - oh, perhaps there were one or two that'd come the old-fashioned way, in ships that were dismantled now, but most of them seemed suffused with that singular glow.

He was chuckling a little over some of the filing mistakes - in particular an item labeled "unknown - medical/learning aid? - probably harmless" that the Doctor knew to in fact be a teddy bear from Rillos - when he heard footsteps approaching, and a moment later Ianto entered, coffee in one hand, tea in the other. "Anything?" he asked, holding the tea out with a steady hand, and the Doctor accepted it gratefully.

"No ghosts!" he replied cheerfully, taking a drink and then setting the cup down on top of a cabinet as he opened a drawer. Files. So was the next drawer down, but one cabinet to the right yielded a haphazard jumble of pieces that weren't even attempting to be in order. "Oh, I haven't seen one of these in years!" he exclaimed, holding up a Chronomodulator. "Lifetimes, even. Matches colours. Utterly useless, but hours of fun when you get locked into an art gallery. Long story, that. That's what this is like, a garage sale. Never know what you're going to find. Whole lot of broken plates, and then something brilliant."

"Uh, Doctor." There was a funny sort of note in Ianto's voice, and a strange feeling in the air... like something wonderful was happening.

He turned, and they were not alone in the room. Pacing quietly was a young girl, her dark hair cropped short around her skull. She was shorter than the both of them to some great degree, with a face that was pretty without being stunning, and for a long moment the Doctor simply stared at her. Oh. Oh. It had been a long time since he'd seen this girl, so, so long. He wanted to reach out and touch her, see her turn and smile at him though she showed no sign of even being aware that they were there, and for a moment he almost thought he was going to. "Susan," he whispered, and though she didn't react, it was alright. He had never thought he'd see any of them again, not since Gallifrey had burned, and even this small glimpse was a gift. Even the wrongness that was Jack was worth it for this.

And then-- she simply took another step forward and was gone, and a crushing emptiness overtook him. No, no, no, it hadn't been enough, hadn't been anything like enough. He should never have let her go in the first place, should have kept her close to him like she'd claimed she wanted, ignored the knowledge that her heart was resting in the twenty second century with a mere human. He was vaguely aware of the floor under his knees and wetness on his face but for several long, long moments that was all until he realised someone was speaking to him.

"Doctor!" Speaking to him and shaking his shoulder, and he turned to look at the thing Jack had made with anguish behind his eyes.

"Susan," he said again. "That was Susan."

"I know, and I'm sorry Doctor, but she wasn't real. She was already dead, you couldn't have done anything."

There was something funny about what Ianto was saying, how he was saying it, but he didn't care, couldn't care, even if some small part of him knew this was an after-effect of the--

Oh.

He struggled to his feet, staring at Ianto, looking past the layer of wrongness as though it was a sheer window-lace. "You're not sad," he realised.

"No," agreed Ianto, puzzled... and then comprehension dawned on his face. "No, I'm not."

The Doctor pushed the last of the devastation aside, grinned, and started running. Time to find Jack.