Title: Nobody special
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 977 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 475 - Mystery
Summary: Jack rarely meets anyone that knows what a weevil is, so he won’t let it go until he does.


Jack slammed the boot of the SUV shut, feeling that familiar ache that came with singlehandedly lugging weevils. He'd been lucky tonight that he hadn't had to do much more than transport it and dump it back in the sewer. It had turned out that it had already been captured by Torchwood months ago, microchipped for ease of keeping track of it. It had simply broken ranks and gone for a wander about the city streets, making it a problem for Jack. Weevils and humans could live in harmony just so long as each of them stayed where they belonged and didn't encroach on each other's space.

As he walked back around to the driver side door he paused for a moment and touched his neck. It wasn't sore and it was no longer bleeding. In fact, it was completely healed, good as new, but that didn't stop Jack from reliving the feeling of having that weevil’s sharp claws ripping into it about an hour ago. He’d had it under control, he tried to kid himself, before his mysterious saviour had come swooping in with a tree branch of all things, wielding it like some modern day Welsh knight might wield a sword.

Ridiculous, Jack thought, pushing the idea away. Being underneath the weight of the weevil and its claws was just a temporary bump in the road. He'd been assaulted worse by weevils before and still managed to apprehend them. Okay, so maybe he had been in a bit of trouble tonight, but that wasn't what bothered him. That young man – kinda sexy, all grunge denim and studded belts – had known what a weevil was and that was a much bigger problem. People in Cardiff sometimes described weevils, having encountered them close up or from afar, but they didn’t have a name for them. They were just monsters, or gangs of hoodlums in costumes.

Jack slid into the back seat and rather than the front one. He could have gone straight back to the hub to investigate but he was too impatient. The hub's computers in the SUV would be good enough. The system slid out in front of him from its side compartment. ‘Who are you, Mister Jones, Ianto Jones?’ he asked, tapping the name into the system’s extensive databases. Jones was a very common name, and Ianto about as Welsh as you could get. He expected to get multiple hits, even after narrowing the search down by approximate age. Early to mid twenties, average height, dark hair. Great arse, Jack mentally added, grinning, knowing the computer wouldn't be aided by that extra piece of information. That was just for his mental image.

And there he was. Ianto Jones, local boy, born 1983, and… former employee of Torchwood One. Now that was very interesting. It also answered the question of how he'd known what a weevil was. ‘Survivor,’ Jack muttered out loud, tapping a few more keys. There hadn't been many of them, and Jack had thought they'd all been dealt with. Most were happy to either be retconned or simply agree to disappear and go live new lives somewhere far away. This one had slipped under his radar. It had been hard to know how many had survived. Those that were converted left no trace of their human remains except for the missing persons reports that got lodged by families in the aftermath. Strangely, no one had reported Ianto Jones as missing. Loner? Dangerous? Now Jack was intrigued by the mysterious young man.

He tapped a few more keys, bringing up Torchwood One’s employment logs. Ah ha. There it was. Girlfriend - Lisa Hallett, also an employee at Torchwood One. Deceased. Reported as missing by her parents, and confirmed dead by process of elimination. So that was why he was bouncing around Cardiff. Lost in the never never between his old life and whatever lay ahead. Though why someone would be wandering through a public park at 11.30 at night was anyone's’ guess. You didn’t do that unless you were itching to get mugged; or catch a weevil gone rogue.

Jack scrolled through the history before his recruitment to Canary Wharf. What people had done in London didn’t particularly interest him. Most had just been glorified public servants with a slightly higher than usual security clearance and a requirement to sign the Official Secrets Act. They tinkered with alien technology, tried to build it into modern earth technology, and most of the time, made a hash of it as far as Jack could tell. They were idiots, but mostly harmless idiots just so long as tinkering was all they did, leaving the engaging in intergalactic relations to those who knew something about it.

Ianto was a drifter. A whole bunch of casual jobs, none of which he’d stuck with for more than two months; mediocre academic transcript, limited close family, no active memberships for gyms, public library cards or so much as a Tesco rewards card. He might as well have not existed. Jack supposed that was how Torchwood One liked them. Unattached. Expendable.

Jack chewed his lip and considered it for a moment. He didn’t really care about this kid, only what he knew which, based on everything he’d just seen, didn’t account for much. He knew what a weevil was. Big deal. Wasn’t like he was out there vlogging the whole world to tell them about it. If he’d survived Canary Wharf then he was one of the lucky ones, who’d do well to keep on keeping a low profile.

Jack flipped off the computer screen and tucked away the keyboard, before exchanging the back seat of the SUV for the front seat. No mysteries here, after all, he decided. Time to go home and worry about what joys Torchwood might bring him tomorrow. Ianto Jones was effectively just a nobody.