Title: Operation: Liar, Liar


As Ianto approached Gwen's desk she looked like she was just seconds from being buried alive by the piles of documents on her desk. Reaching out with one hand, Ianto grabbed the uppermost three inches of the highest and most precarious pile before they toppled, setting them in a new pile on Owen's desk beside her.

'I'd put your coffee down but I'm not sure where,' he annouced, clutching the steaming mug.

Gwen looked up and the shadows under her eyes spoke volumes about how little sleep she'd had. She'd been here when he arrived at five am so God only knew how long she'd been at that desk. The only signal she'd even been home since last night was the fact that she'd changed clothes.

Gwen sighed and reached out for the mug, which Ianto handed to her. 'Thank you, Ianto. I needed one of these about five hours ago.'

'You could've just said,' he replied, having been ignored when he'd arrived. 'Everybody else just yells when they want something.'

She pointedly didn't confirm or deny the statement. It was just common knowledge that Ianto had been Jack's errand boy and now that Jack was gone, he was everyone else's. Not that he hadn't also been asked to step up and fill an operational gap in their numbers, but he still had to squeeze in everything else around it. Gwen wasn't the only one forgoing a regular night's sleep to keep the place ticking over.

She sipped slowly at her coffee and let her eyes drift up over the edge of the mug to study the piles of work ahead of her. 'Are you sure this is everything from the past month?'

'You think something is missing?' He'd been diligent in collecting the reports from Owen and Tosh, adding his own so that they had a full set for everything they'd encountered since Abbadon. That part of the job hadn't changed. Collating mission reports was often like pulling teeth, even from Tosh, who was too keen to get back to the million other projects she had on the go.

Gwen triedhard not to look disconsolate. 'I was hoping you'd tell me half of these were old files.'

'Sorry. Oh, and just so you know, Owen just texted to say he's not coming in today.'

She groaned and dipped her head. 'Well, that's just great. Did he say why?'

'Presumably to avoid your ire since half of those relate to the short time he was in charge.'

Gwen rolled her eyes. 'And now we know why he threw in the towel,' she replied, heaving another sigh.

Ianto fussed with a second pile, straightening it up before it resembled a jenga game about to go horribly wrong. 'I think it was more to do with nearly blowing up half of Bute Street that put him off leadership.'

'It could have happened to any of us.'

'Yeah,' Ianto conceded, dropping down onto Owen's desk chair, 'but it happened on his watch and he lost his nerve.'

'And now I'm stuck tidying up after him,' Gwen replied. 'Give me a weevil over paperwork any day. You couldn't just magically administrate this all way for me, could you?'

Ianto smiled in spite of himself. 'That's something Jack would say.' Then he remembered why he'd come here in the first place. Jack was the problem that just wouldn't go away, no matter how much he tried. 'We need to talk about that.'

Gwen's eyes took on a new blaze that hadn't been there before. Gone was the earlier weariness. When it came to Jack she still thought of herself as his girl Friday. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, it's been a month and people are starting to ask questions.'

'What people? What questions?' Her voice took on an accusatory tone.

'People that deal with Torchwood. The Police Commissioner, the Mayor, UNIT, the First Minister, the Home Office, the Prime Minister, even the Crown itself. They're going to start wondering why they haven't heard from us. They know Jack avoided their calls and emails like the plague, but even they're going to get suspicious if they don't hear something soon.'

Gwen looked stunned that their so-called secret organisation was on a first name basis with so many people. 'There was nothing on Jack's desk that mentioned any of that. How could you know?'

Ianto bit the inside of his lip at the question. Even now they just thought of him as the maid and tea lady. No one had stopped to wonder how it was they still got paid every fortnight or why other agencies didn't hassle them when they overstepped onto someone else's turf. 'Because in between making Jack's coffee, filing reports and picking up his laundry I watch and listen. Everyone else is too busy worrying about what they're doing, but Jack kept this place going. It's not all just about pointing guns and looking heroic.'

Gwen looked like she'd been slapped by the comment. 'Well, it's pretty hard to know anything about what he did when he just took off without a word to anyone, isn't it?' she seethed. Her expression softened immediately after the words left her lips. 'Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I know you two were...'

Ianto sidestepped the direction Gwen's conversation was headed. He still wasn't ready to talk about any of that. Behind left behind without a single message hurt more than he could say. 'He left without telling us whether he was coming back or not, I get it. It doesn't change the fact that he's left us in the shit.'

Ianto's language clearly surprised her. 'What do you mean?'

Ianto sighed on the inside. He was going to have to draw a diagram in crayon, he could tell. Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him that everyone else went around with blinkers on. Only Ianto seemed to have noticed the intricate workings of Torchwood and the delicate tightrope walk Jack often tread in the name of secrecy and keeping Cardiff from being destroyed. 'If these people get wind that Jack isnt here... They could shut us down.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Ianto,' she replied, though her eyes betrayed her true nervousness at the suggestion. 'Outside the government, beyond the police. That's what Jack always says.'

Ianto tensed at the words. He knew all too well just how that kind of arrogance could breed complacency. And more to the point, it wasn't even true. 'Be that as it may,' he began, deciding against explaining all the many reasons why that was a complete fallacy, 'what do you think they'd do if they found out that the person in charge had just disappeared, and that his team were cobbling together as best they could, but that none of them really know enough.'

Gwen sat up straighter in her chair. 'I think we know plenty.'

Ianto shook his head. 'We have no idea what Jack knew. We don't even know where he's from, or why he can remember things that happened a hundred years ago. Does Jack strike you as the kind of guy that sits in bed at night reading old mission reports from 1910?'

Gwen looked pensive. 'There was this photograph at Estelle's house. Jack said it was his father, but it was like looking into a mirror. He later admitted it was him. That he'd been in love with her back before the war. We know he can come back from death. '

Ianto nodded. He wished Jack had been as honest with him as he'd been with Gwen. His resurrection from Owen's gunshot had surprised Ianto just as much as anyone. 'He's been alive all these years and never said anything. I found old reports he'd written locked away in the archives. He's been working here for a century. He knows everything about this place and told us almost nothing.'

'Okay, sure, but they still couldn't shut us down. They can't just come along and lock us out of the hub. We're the only ones who can get in. They can't reach us here. We'll just carry on like we are now.'

Ianto shook his head once more at her naiveté. 'And where do you think all the money comes from to keep this place going? If the Crown cut us off, that's it. Do you think Owen will work for free? Who's going to be able to afford the electricity just to keep the lights on? If Jack's been here as long as we think he has, then who's going to believe that we're as capable at running this as he was? If they lose faith in us, they either bring in someone to take over, in which case you can probably kiss your job goodbye, because I can't think of a single agency that wouldn't want to run this place with their own people. That or they just strangle us into submission by cutting off the one thing we really need. I can't operate a bank account with no money in it.'

'So, what do we do? I can't just call these people up and tell them he's gone and that I'm in charge now. Not based in what you're implying' She sounded panicky at the mere suggestion.

'You're not going to. I am.'

'But you just said they could shut us down. You can't tell them.'

Ianto leaned forward slightly. 'I'm not going to tell them Jack's gone. I'm going to make out as if Jack is here but that he's delegating some of his reports to his team. He's going to give us an introduction and then hand over the reins.'

Gwen folded her arms, needing more convincing. 'And how exactly do you propose to do that?'

'Tosh can recalibrate our text to speech software to use fragments of Jack's speech picked up from years of accumulated CCTV. In fact, I've already got her working on it. I only have to pretend to be him for a few minutes, suggest that dealing with the Commissioner of Cardiff Police would be best handled by a former one of their own, and let you take it from there.'

'What makes you think they'll want to deal with me?'

Ianto gave her an incredulous look. They really did go around with blinkers! 'Have you missed the raised voices from Jack's office? If you know anything about him you'll know how stubborn he is when he doesn't get what he wants. I should think any major department head would be glad of dealing with someone who is at least prepared to hear their case before being told what to do. That's our in. Give them someone they want to deal with and they probably won't question it too hard.'

'And how do we get in contact with these people? It's not like Jack left a little black book behind.'

'Also dealt with. Tosh has finally managed to crack Jack's email account. Not his whole account, his files and classified reports, but at least his email and phone records. All his overdue meetings and calls are banked up in his inbox.' Ianto couldn't believe how much stuff was in there. Jack was corresponding with some of them in short form every few days. Emails were easy to fake, but it was the face to face phone calls that Ianto had been chewing over for ages, trying to figure out how they would respond in Jack's absence. 'We apologise that we haven't got back to them, suggest Jack's been way too busy, but he has people who they can speak to who are across the details.'

'And are we? I can barely keep up with this lot,' she said, waving at the piles of mission reports.

'Hopefully enough so that we don't blunder this.' That was the worst case scenario. Someone cottoning on to the fact that they were faking Jack's continued leadership. 'If you're happy to deal with the police and the mayor, I can tackle the government and the Crown. We can coin toss for UNIT if you want.'

Gwen chewed her lip, thinking it over. 'It's risky.'

'But not nearly as risky as sitting here keeping mum. If no one hears from Jack for months they'll probably assume we've been compromised and send in the army.' With orders to shoot on sight anyone inside, he realised.

'How will you know what to say? Are you sure you can handle talking to the government?'

Ianto shook his head, often having wondered the same thing in the last few days before finally plucking up the courage to confront Gwen on the matter. 'I'm relying on eighteen months of listening to Jack's phone calls at every conceivable hour of the day and the endless complaints he makes once he puts, or slams, the phone down. And if worst comes to worst, I'll lie like there's no tomorrow.' He felt a little as if he already knew these people, just from the way Jack spoke to them and the little tidbits of information Jack dropped in his conversations between rounds of coffee. And he knew he was an accomplished liar. If he could pull the wool over Jack's eyes, he could lie to just about anyone.

Gwen looked hesitant as she locked eyes with him. 'We're really going to do this?'

'I don't see what choice we have.'

'And what if...' Her eyes forced themselves away to stare off at something to her left. 'What if he doesn't come back?'

Ianto heaved a long sigh. He'd mulled that possibility over more than anyone in the last few weeks. He'd run off with his Doctor. The same Doctor who hadn't been sighted anywhere on Earth for two years. What if it was another two years until he came back? Or more? 'Then we just have to hope that by the time anyone figures out he's gone for good that we've done enough of a job to convince them we can handle things.'

Gwen was quiet for a few moments thinking it all over as she drained the last of the coffee from her mug and set the empty vessel on top of the shortest stack of files. 'You seem to know more about what goes on here than anyone.'

He shrugged. 'Just doing my job.'

'Perhaps we should have voted you in to lead. You're taking on a big responsibility maintaining a secret this big. You should have put your hand up for before.'

'I wouldn't want it. You make life and death decisions every day out there in the field. So did Jack. And seriously, which of you would have voted for me?'

'Maybe we just didn't know what was right in front of us. Like you said, leadership isn't just about waving your gun around and looking flashy.'

'I think the word I used was heroic, not flashy.' Ianto took the compliment for what it was without saying anything further. He didn't think Jack would have just left them without a word if he hadn't thought they could manage this.

'So,' Gwen began, 'where do we start?'

'I'll give you copies of all Jack's email correspondence so you can get up to speed. I'll tell you what I know and what I've heard, and Tosh will fine tune our vocal software so that it's ready to go when we're ready to start making calls.'

Gwen gestured dejectedly the mountain around her. 'And what about all this? Where am I supposed find time in between aliens and perpetuating fraud?'

Ianto grinned at her. 'I think Owen can finish what he started. More than half of these are from his tenure. It's the least he can do for us keeping him in a job.'