Title: The family eye
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,820 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 242 - Eye
Summary: Jack is determined to get to the bottom of a personal mystery.


Jack perused the catalogue of wedding dresses, admiring them in turn, each more beautiful than the one before. 'No, I like that one. Good choice,' he said, pointing emphatically at a picture of the dress Ianto had ultimately decided upon. It looked great on the model and would look even more stunning on Gwen. Simple yet elegant, understated but classy. All the things Ianto excelled at with his own wardrobe.

Jack knew he'd done the right thing in sending him on this very important errand, whatever personal embarrassment he may have mentioned suffering along the way. Jack knew it was wrong to giggle at the inference made by the shop assistant, but it was kind of funny. And it was the least they could do to start making up for having pissed off Gwen a few hours ago. Well, him in any case. Torchwood had messed things up on her big day, not him personally, but the guilt and the blame was there nonetheless. On reflection, the baby Jesus comment had probably been unwarranted.

'I estimated Gwen's size from the Hub's security laser scans,' Ianto explained. 'As you know, my dad was a master tailor. He could size a man's inside leg measurement by his stride across the shop threshold.' Ianto beamed at him.

Jack grinned at the admission. He liked it when Ianto took pride in his work. 'Ah, the family eye,' he teased, giving Ianto his trademark salacious smile. 'Remind me to test it some time.' Not that he didn't think Ianto was already well schooled in Jack's measurements. He did like games though, and what better way to end the day than a little naughty role play?

He received a coy little smile from his lover in return. 'Well, if later on...'

Jack really wished Owen hadn't chosen that moment to burst in on them. It wasn't often he got Ianto to stay focused on a conversation that was completely unrelated to work. He really wanted to see where that sentence was going to end, right before Owen had delivered the bad news. But hey, on the plus side, they did get to make it to the wedding, and he did get to admire Ianto's fine taste in clothing up close. It was even better than the picture. There was of course, no way even Ianto could outshine that effort, though his choice of suits for that day was exceptionally fine.



Jack hadn't given Ianto's comment another thought until days later. It intrigued him, this story of Ianto's father, the master tailor. It was only as he'd been surreptitiously watching the young man from a distance, observing the way he fiddled with his shirt cuffs whilst he waited for the microwave to finish reheating leftovers, that Jack wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Asking Ianto outright felt too much like the easy option. Besides, he didn't think Ianto would give him a straight answer. He always had this little bit of intrigue about him, like there was always more left unsaid even when Jack was given an answer. This he wanted to find out for himself. Besides, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes, then he could rag on Ianto for weeks, or maybe months.

Jack felt surprised when an initial search turned up nothing at all - nothing he was looking for, anyway. It couldn't be that hard to dig up a few old records and get the low down on Ianto's window into haberdashery. Jack kept at it, and with a bit more perseverance, he uncovered what he'd been looking for. There he was, Cerwyn Jones.

Jack frowned at the screen. Someone had removed and replaced some of the employment records for Ianto's father. Jack assumed it had been Ianto's doing, though it was sloppy work by all accounts. It was obvious right from the outset that the records were fake. It didn't have any of the hallmarks of his usually fastidious companion. He was something of an expert at laying fake trails and falsifying records. It was all part of the job, helping to cover up otherwise unexplainable incidents in which Torchwood had been involved. Few did it better than Ianto. He could have the whole mess covered up even before the team had left the scene.

Jack reviewed the records. It looked like they'd been done in a hurry some time ago, as if changing them had been an afterthought - rather than a deliberate part of something bigger - and something he never expected anyone would go prying into in any detail. It only had to be good enough for cursory glance to be believable, which Jack admitted it had. But subject to more vigorous scrutiny, the facade dropped away very quickly. Even without Tosh, Jack was easily able to recover the deleted files, patching them together with the real ones, much like stitching together the pieces of a suit that Ianto was so fond of. It wasn't much. A few tax returns, some employment records, and a letter of resignation. Everything else was in place, just as it should have been. It felt wrong, prying like this, but Jack was desperate to know and Ianto wasn't giving away anything. He'd kept a wary eye in Ianto's movements outside, making sure he wasn't about to suddenly come in to drop off files or tell Jack there was someone on the phone for him. He didn't want Ianto to know he was digging into his past. At least not yet.

What Jack found once he'd restored the true records perplexed him. Shop assistant - menswear. That couldn't be right. A Debenhams department store wasn't what he'd call high end fashion, and certainly not the place of work for someone who was a master tailor. Jack wasn't sure even posh department stores these days had anyone with anything but basic skills on how to operate a cash register. Not like the old days when everything was kept behind the counter or under glass and the only way to get to it was to be convinced by the shop's employees that what they had to offer was just perfect for sir. And that was a long time ago now. Even in Cerwyn's generation, customer service was a dying art form.

An uneasy feeling began to settle in the pit of Jack's stomach. Could Ianto have been lying about this, in the same way he'd lied about so many things when he'd first joined? He checked the record that had been overlaid - the one that purported Mr Jones to be a key employee of a small but reputable tailors shop in Cardiff's city center. Noting that the tailors shop was still in operation, Jack decided to take a trip down there. Electronic records were one thing, but to get to the bottom of the mystery he needed to ask a few questions about this so-called family eye.



Jack drove into the city, finding the small shop tucked away in an arcade where the shop fronts were on the grimy side, but the rent looked affordable. He knew it seemed pointless, since Mr Jones had in truth never worked there, but there had to be a reason why Ianto had picked this particular place. He could have picked anywhere, somewhere that had since closed down or been sold, or even existed at all, but Jack's investigative senses were tingling. He went in and found a man in his fifties who looked the right vintage, asking if he'd ever had a Cerwyn Jones in his employ.

The tailor looked at him with an air of skepticism, tugging nervously on the end of his measuring tape slung around his neck. 'Who's asking?'

Jack apologised, explaining that Cerwyn was an old friend and someone he'd known when he'd been renting a flat in the estate back in the day whilst he was studying in Cardiff. He'd hoped to catch up with people from the old neighborhood while he was in town. He didn't have a number or an up to date address for him, so he'd been doorknocking local tailors in the area. A man of Cerwyn's talents was surely known to his peers and it was hardly a big network.

'Aye, I knew him, but we never worked together. He's been dead a good seven years, bute,' the tailor replied. 'I'm sorry if that's come as a shock. Cancer, you know.'

Jack did his best to look suitably upset over the news. Jack knew that much, though come to think of it, Ianto had never openly mentioned that either.

'He always talked about doing more,' the tailor said, a sad little look on his face, 'but he never did. I used to tell him he was wasted on those cheap department store counters. No ambition, though. Just plodded along like he had the best he could have hoped for. Food on the table and a roof over his head for his family. Poor sod. His wife went the same way a few years later. His son still comes here though,' he added. 'Do you remember him? Skinny thing. Never thought he'd amount to anything, but he seems to be doing okay for himself.' He chuckled. 'Enough to buy my suits, in any case. Probably got a number here for him if you wanted to get in touch.'

Jack declined the offer, stating that he didn't want to impose. It had been a long time ago after all. He barely remembered Cerwyn's children, so he said.



Jack got back in the car and drove around town, finally pulling up onto the old estate and locating the house that was listed as the last know address for Mr and Mrs Jones. It was abandoned, or looked to close to it. The small front yard was tattered and overgrown, the gate rusted and the short cyclone fencing enclosing the yard in a similar state. Paint was peeling from the walls and the slate roof fallen into disrepair. Like the man himself, the house seemed to have died a slow and untimely death.

He checked the records for the house. It had been sold as part of the estate of Mrs Jones, the meager proceeds split equally between Ianto as his older sister. Whoever had bought it had given up on it, deciding it was worth more as a bulldozed strip of land, ready for redevelopment.

He couldn't picture the family that had grown up here under his nose for years whilst he'd been working for Torchwood. Like so many people, Jack had probably crossed paths with them a dozen times over the years before their timelines properly intersected. Whilst Jack was running around the city, capturing aliens and preventing disaster, people he knew now had been children, going to school, playing in the streets, doing homework, hanging out at the cinemas, oblivious to him and what he did to protect their idyllic existence.

It wasn't a bad house by all accounts, rather it was one of the nicer ones, but still in a reasonably shabby part of town, where crime rates were high and instances of teenage pregnancy even higher. One shoplifting record in his teens seemed nothing compared to what must have gone on around here. Perhaps that too was a lie. Had there been other infringements? But then why erase those and leave one conviction still in place? Somehow Jack got the feeling that the conviction was genuinely standalone.

Jack rapped the steering wheel with his thumb, trying to fathom it out. Why lie about his father's work? It seemed a silly thing to say, and even sillier to keep perpetuating the story. Jack knew Ianto liked to be neat and orderly. It was just how he was, needing to put everything in life into some kind of order to stop the world from crushing him with its unpredictability. He was the complete opposite to Jack, who reveled in the randomness and serendipity of life. Anything less was just boring.

Could part of it be that incessant need to control everything? Did he think Jack would think less of him if he knew Ianto had come from nothing? It was stupid, in Jack's opinion, but perhaps that was the crux of it. It made Ianto happy to think that he could be proud of something his family had done, giving him a platform for his own sense of self worth.

Jack gazed at the house again, trying to visually strip back the years in his mind's eye. What kind of relationship did they have? Had they been close? Was he ashamed that his father had never excelled, and wanted to keep up the impression that he was more successful than he had been? Or had their relationship been strained, and this fabrication an attempt for Ianto to mentally rewrite his own past, trying to make it into something better than it had been? It tore Jack up to think either scenario was correct. The inescapable fact was that Ianto's father was dead, and so any semblance of the truth now lay only in those that survived him. He didn't think Ianto would like to know he'd been snooping, and thought that the chances of getting the real story out of Ianto were even slimmer. He'd tried so hard to keep the lie alive with the constant little comments that Jack didn't think pressing him for the truth would benefit anyone.

Jack twisted the key and let the engine turn over, masking the sigh that escaped him.



'Where have you been all afternoon?' Ianto asked, spotting Jack's entrance to the hub.

Jack removed his coat and tossed it lazily over the railing. 'Just following up a few things.'

'Fair enough,' he said, not even bothering to question Jack further. Iamto knew him so well now that he didn't bother to press Jack for details when he himself didn't offer them up. They all knew there were still things he didn't like to involve them in. Somehow they'd learnt to just accept that, but none more so than the one person who perhaps should have asked the question. Jack knew Ianto worried about him when he went off on his lone wolf investigations.

'What about you?' Jack asked. 'Anything happening here?'

'All quiet, blessedly. A perfect afternoon for getting things done.'

'Indeed,' Jack agreed. Jack stared at Ianto, trying to spot the secrets hidden in that placid face. Why couldn't he see them? 'So, you're good then?'

Ianto's brow furrowed ever so slightly and he gripped the clipboard little tighter. 'As far as I'm aware. Why?'

Jack stepped closer and gripped him by the shoulders. 'You know you can tell me anything, don't you?'

'Of course.'

'Just look me straight in the eye and tell me. I won't ever go crazy or judge you,' Jack promised.

'I didn't think you would.'

Jack let out a breath and nodded. 'Good.'

'Actually, there is one thing that's been eating me up.'

Jack gripped him a little tighter. 'There is?'

Ianto looked back at him a little nervously. 'See, there was this report due to the Home Office and I knew you hadn't finished it or sent it across, so I just um, sort of... finished it. And I know that there are certain intelligence reports that only you are supposed to do, but it was overdue and so I just thought... Anyway, they called and wanted to ask questions. I lied and told them you weren't available and that I could answer whatever they wanted to know, within reason of course. I know I shouldn't have, but I mean, it was all resolved in the end, right? No harm done.' Ianto finally stopped and took a breath. 'I've been wanting to tell you for weeks. I should have run it by you first. I won't do it again.'

Jack tried to take it all in, but it was hard when it blindsided him against what he'd been expecting to hear. 'Well, okay. Uh... sure,' Jack said, disappointed that the admission wasn't the one he'd been expecting. 'Anything else I should know about? Since we're being honest?'

'Nope. That's it. You're not annoyed with me?'

Jack barked out a laugh, hiding his own feelings beneath his Captain's facade. 'For saving me from paperwork? Hell, no. But yeah, if it's the intelligence briefing, let me run an eye over it. Frobisher is a pain in the arse at the best of times with all his stupid prying questions. I like to know what I might get grilled on. Unless of course you're volunteering for that duty as well.'

'I don't like politicians.'

'Me either. But someone's gotta do it, right?'

Ianto nodded again. 'Right. So, coffee?'

'Thanks.' Jack didn't press him for more. He'd surely come around in his own good time. Jack would just have to wait, and he had plenty of time for that.