Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,092 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 278 - Street

Summary: Ianto has a mystery on his hands that involves Jack and a street that appears to be beyond ordinary.

Ianto dislikes mysteries, but the ones he hates the most are the kind that involve Jack - and there are a lot of those, so he finds himself permanently in a state of flux over the enigma that is their esteemed leader. Jack has lived a long time and it would be impossible not to have a few skeletons in the closet, although in Jack's case, the skeletons might be more literal than figurative.

Jack's just wrapped up their meeting by announcing that he's taking a couple of days off. That in itself raises questions. Not for any particular reason, he assures them, just because he's due some time off. No one can deny that, but Ianto knows that Jack taking days off is a load of bollocks. Jack doesn't do days off. He barely sleeps, and he doesn't skive off work like the rest of them, when getting out of bed feels like the greatest challenge ever to have been faced by any human in living history. There are days when even Ianto won't deny he struggles to motivate himself sufficiently.

Torchwood takes a lot out of you, but despite that, Jack seems impervious to it. He attacks each day with the same level of enthusiasm and good cheer. Things get him down and eat away at his resolve, but he doesn't let that stop him doing what needs to be done. Even on a really bad day, Jack's not the type to pull the duvet back over his head and pretend the world outside doesn't exist. He might drag his feet when it comes to finishing off paperwork, but he never purposely avoids his duties. He's hardwired to work and that's all there is to it. Besides which, if he was planning a few days vacation, Ianto expected he might get a gentle nudge of encouragement to join him. Jack's promise of dinner and a movie had yet to eventuate, but that hadn't stopped them rekindling things from where they left off. That should have been the giveaway for the rest of the team if nothing else - that Jack would want some time alone and away from Ianto, who he now very publicly touched or kissed whenever the opportunity presented itself. Or perhaps the rest of them aren't all that fussed as to the reason Jack wants some time off work and just assume that Ianto will make himself available after hours.

Ianto doesn't press Jack for details the night before he's due to leave. All he does is keep a watchful eye over the files that end up on Jack's desk. There's always a chance that whatever he's up to, he might need to do a little research before he leaves, or to review some old case file that has reared its ugly head and necessitated this sudden departure. The files are left on Jack's desk when he leaves for the night however, and though Ianto paws through them carefully, it's all banal content. Revised budgets, mission reports drafted by the team for recent cases that have now been closed, a sheaf of papers for calls and meeting requests with people from UNIT, the Home Office and MI6 that have gone unheeded and unreplied. There's nothing here that triggers anything to be investigated on the sly.

Ianto has already discounted a visit from Jack's Doctor. There's absolutely no way he'd be able to keep that under a lid. He'd be bouncing around like a little kid, and Jack was always saying that when the Doctor did show up, he couldn't wait to give him the grand tour of the hub and to show off his team. Ianto had no doubt that Jack would have him polishing the handrails and setting out the fine China and silverware days in advance, wanting everything just perfect for their visitor - or at least he knew Ianto would.

Jack's computer logs give nothing away either. If he has files tucked away in his captain's log, then that's a different matter. Those are secure and private. Not even Tosh could probably hack into them, but then Jack has always confirmed that there is nothing in there that they need to concern themselves with. Anything in there is secreted away only in order to protect future events and timelines. Ianto isn't sure how Jack can know what will and what won't affect the future, but he knows better than to ask - something about being a Time Agent back in days gone by. Maybe it's training or maybe it's some innate sense that he's developed. They don't question it. No one wants the future ruined whatever it may have in store for them. Nor do some of them really want to know what their future might look like.

Ianto was up half the night scouring their database but he couldn't say for certain what he was looking for. As good as their databases now were, largely thanks to the extraordinary amount of work done by himself and Tosh, there was no metadata tag going to bring up files where Jack was noted as acting weird. In all likelihood, the volume of files that would be returned by such a search would be more than Ianto could digest in a month.

He tried a different tact, looking for periods of inactivity from Jack in their computer systems. Maybe there was something repetitive or regular about these days off, though this was the first time in the entire time he himself had worked here that he recalled Jack taking time away.

His new search did show up something interesting. There were indeed regular periods of four days each when Jack would disappear, claiming time off work for reasons undisclosed. They were years apart, almost too distant to connect them together, yet something about it sent Ianto's senses tingling. He cross referenced things the team were working on in the days leading up to the disappearances, and things that happened thereafter. Only one thing kept coming up. The team were baffled by Jack's behaviour, some even intimating that Jack had perhaps had a mental breakdown. That in itself wasn't helpful - Jack's normal was nothing like anyone else's definition of normal - but what Ianto did get out of it was a location. Tretarri. All of Jack's strange behaviour seemed to be targeted on this one particular old street down by the docks. From throwing bottles into the street with strange, perhaps drunken, companions, smashing windows and disturbing the peace, to just standing there at the top of the street, waving about at the air like there was something invisible in it, there was no denying that the team thought Jack had lost his mind. Ianto was astute enough to know that Jack was fully in possession of his faculties - even if it sometimes felt like the things he did were utterly stupid or without thought - and that if something strange was happening down there, it had gotten under Jack's skin and wasn't letting go.



Ianto has his files tucked under his arm as he gets out of the car, parked just around the corner in the next street. He could go and have a poke around down this street on his own, but he knows better. There's too much weird stuff that goes on at Torchwood to take uncalculated risks. There could be something down there that only comes out at certain times, aliens inhabiting the run down old houses that are now not much better than for housing blue collar workers and uni students, or a dimension that could open up without notice and swallow him whole.

He knows nothing right now, but he knows that if Jack hasn't managed to solve it yet, even after so many decades, the chances of him cracking it are remote. Not impossible, just highly unlikely. More chance he ends up on the receiving end of something bad. Better to wait and bide his time. Jack will turn up here eventually, and then Ianto will watch and see what happens after that. Jack clearly doesn't want their help on this case, or he would have handed it over to them years ago. There's something personal about this that Ianto has yet to discover. Whether he wants to be openly poking his nose into Jack's business will depend on what he finds when Jack gets here.

Perhaps there's nothing sinister about it at all. Perhaps someone from his past lives on this street, and this is Jack just being Jack - turning up every once in a blue moon to check in on them. It doesn't quite account for the strange behaviour the others have noted, but then again, that could have been a ruse put on for their benefit. Ianto isn't stupid. Jack has lived a long time and loved a good many people. The chance that he's never done anything more than just love them isn't lost on Ianto. Jack never did destroy all the marriage records, though he found only two. Where there were marriages, there were no doubt children, even illegitimate ones. Jack never struck Ianto as the marrying type, by he supposes even someone like Jack isn't immune to the insistent tug of love on his heartstrings. Only Jack knew just how deep and far reaching those tendrils of familial connections went. Knowing that Ianto was prying might be a bridge too far. After all, Ianto had his own family secrets he kept close to his chest. He wasn't ready for Jack to know absolutely everything about him yet. Perhaps that secrecy went both ways, neither wanting to give up too much of themselves in order to protect them from the inevitable - that Jack would one day leave him behind, or maybe that Ianto's own existence would wink out, leaving Jack behind to mourn the loss. Would he regret not having shared all of himself with Jack? Probably, but it was easier to regret than to admit the things that made him feel vulnerable. Tretarri might be Jack's vulnerability for one reason or another. Care needed to be taken that he didn't jeopardise his relationship with Jack on account of being too nosy.

He rounded the corner, hovering just out of sight behind a small tree. It was new, freshly planted in a round gap in the nature strip, having been fostered somewhere until it reached a suitable size. It seemed the whole street was getting a makeover. More trees were slowly being planted along its length, along with lights fitted in the ground to beam up into the greenery at night. Why this particular neighbourhood was getting a gentrification was anybody's guess, though he suspected it was on account of its shabby nature. The council had spent years and millions of pounds trying to bring Cardiff into the twenty-first century to compete with its sister cities in England and Scotland. It didn't have ancient architecture or a bustling modern metropolis to give it an edge and a pull for tourists. It needed shiny new buildings, modern sculptures and installations, and a way to showcase the bay. Now that was being extended beyond the city limits. No one wanted dirty old docks and crumbling estates. They wanted fresh apartments by the water, chic cafés and restaurants, and a general feel that you weren't about to get mugged walking home late at night.

So much had changed just in the brief time he'd grown up here, and more in the time since he'd left for London and returned again. It was less like coming home as it was moving to an entirely different city. Much like himself, it had started off shabby and unrefined, but become neat and polished through effort and necessity. Tretarri simply seemed to be the next item on the list to get a much needed makeover.

Perhaps that was what had Jack unsettled. He was so often conflicted, caught living the past whilst trying to reconcile himself with the present. This might be his last chance to resolve whatever it was that troubled him about this place before it no longer existed.

Apart from that, Wharf Street looked just like any other Cardiff street, completely benign and unthreatening. He cast a careful look along its length but there was no sign of Jack. Ianto sat down on the steps of an abandoned terrace house at the top of the street, just around the corner and out of view. He knew Jack would show up here. It was only a matter of time. What happened next depended entirely on Jack.