Title: Impossible secrets
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,872 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 496 - Missing
Summary: Gwen and Ianto both have to face up to some secrets being harder to deal with than others.


‘You look like you haven't slept much,’ Ianto observed as Gwen quietly slid into the chair opposite him. He hadn't slept much himself, but he hoped it didn’t show quite so much. A waitress came around and he ordered coffees, one short black and one double shot cappuccino.

‘Thanks.’

‘Coffee is actually pretty good here,’ he told Gwen. Everybody seemed to assume that Ianto was a complete coffee snob, and that nothing could possibly compare to the coffee he made himself, but he was no coffee fashionista. There were plenty of people who could brew a decent cup just as well as he could, and it was awfully more convenient to know that you didn't always have to make it yourself. Particularly on a day like today when you needed to meet Gwen somewhere that wasn't the hub. She’d been the one to text him, needing to talk. He’d been the one to text back, suggesting the location. Jack undoubtedly wouldn’t notice either of them being a little bit late. He’d have things on his mind as well.

He understood her request to need someone to talk to. After her second trip out to Flat Holm Island which had proven even more disastrous than her first, she was going to need someone to help soften the blow for her. She might have talked to Jack but it was like putting two Leos in a room, both wearing their hearts on their sleeves. It would have been way too emotionally charged for either than to have had a meaningful conversation about what they witnessed and how they now had to deal with the aftermath. It wasn't as if Ianto didn't wear his heart on his sleeve either; it was just slightly more concealed beneath that pinstripe suit and silk tie, though only just. There was a lot more going on under that facade than he often let on,surprising his colleagues when he did come up with something that seemed overly emotional or empathetic.

The coffees arrived fairly promptly. Gwen managed to pick up one of the two sugar sticks and twiddle the small paper tube in her hand without actually tearing the top off it for dumping it into the milk froth which was covered in chocolate sprinkles. Ianto tore one open himself, measured out half a teaspoon and then dropped it into his short black, stirring it methodically and giving Gwen a chance to collect her thoughts. These things always were always easier when he waited for her to start the conversation.

‘How long have you known?’ Gwen asked.

‘Just over a year,’ Ianto replied. ‘Before Lisa,’ he added. Everything in his life now seemed to be delineated along those lines. Before Lisa and after Lisa.

‘Jack made you keep it a secret?’

‘Jack didn't make me do anything,’ Ianto replied. He was loyal to Jack and loyal to Torchwood, but he was still his own man, capable of deciding his own fate. ‘I admit it hasn't been easy not being able to tell anyone about it.’

‘So, you were keeping it secret?’ Gwen said, throwing an accusatory glare in his direction, her coffee forgotten.

‘Yes, I kept it a secret, but I chose to.’

‘So, you're no better than Jack.’

Ianto tried not to feel wounded by the comment. For good or ill, he was in many ways nothing at all like Jack. ‘I'll leave that judgement to you,’ he replied. But if I was really so intent on keeping it secret would I have sent you all of those clues? A way to lead you there to the answers you needed?’

Gwen's cheeks went pink as she embarrassingly remembered that yes, Ianto had told her, in his own way. She'd watched him after their board meeting, going after Jack to implore him on Gwen's behalf to change his mind. She also remembered their body language, Jack all pointed fingers and unyielding, Ianto slouched and apologetic.

‘And is Jack still mad with you?’ she asked. She clearly couldn't picture a scenario where Jack had asked someone to do something, they defied his orders, and there wasn't some sort of retribution. They'd all done it at least once and it was always unpleasant for a period of time afterwards. Having some as loyal to Jack as Ianto defying his orders was apparently worth double the rest of them.

Ianto set his spoon on the edge of the saucer. ‘I'm not sure he was ever mad to begin with,’ he replied. ‘He never wanted anyone to know about the place because he was ashamed of it. It's the embodiment of everything he can't fix in this world. You know how he gets when he can't have things his own way.’

Gwen did know, and she could imagine how much it must irritate Jack to have things that he couldn't control like the Rift taking people and then deciding when it wanted to dump them back injured, traumatised or worse. ‘How do you live with a secret like that?’

‘I don't know,’ he replied. ‘I guess you just get used to keeping so many different kinds of secrets that they all start to blur together in their own way.’

‘I know,’ Gwen said, ‘but this? How do you even sleep at night when you know that’s what's out there?’

Ianto looked down at the table top and cleared his throat. ‘That first time? I had no idea where Jack was taking me. I'm not even sure that he knew what was to come, but by the time we'd found them and Jack realised where he'd come from, there was no way he could keep it a secret. He knew where he had to take them for help, and he knew he had to take me with him.’

‘What was it like?’

She knew the answer of course. ‘Like walking into the jaws of hell,’ he replied. ‘We've seen so many things…’ he said, drifting off and staring off into the distance of the slowly filling cafe. ‘That place though… those poor people. Knowing there was nothing more we could do for them.’ He hung his head, like he was ashamed to admit his shortcomings.

‘I don't get it,’ Gwen said, erupting into a passionate plea. ‘Whilst their families keep thinking that they're just going to turn up one day? How many times have we found someone killed because of the rift, hidden what happened to them, found a replacement corpse and passed it off as the victim? If these people can't ever return home to their families why don't we just tell them that something terrible happened to them, give them a body and let them move on with their lives? Give them some closure. What good does it do anyone letting them go on with false hope, year after year, thinking they're just missing?’

‘Don't you think I've asked myself the same question a hundred times?’ Ianto replied. ‘The problem is they're not dead. I guess we're all just hoping that maybe one day they’ll be well enough to go home. And then there's timelines. They disappear from here and now, but nobody knows when they'll pop back up through the Rift again. It could be tomorrow, ten years from now or forty years into their past. What do we do then if they've been written off as dead?’

‘But they are dead, for all intents and purposes,’ Gwen challenged, eyes burning with unspent injustice. ‘Jack is never going to let them go, is he? He thinks it's okay for poor women like Nikki Bevan to spend years of their lives searching for answers that they’re never going to get.’ Then Gwen clamped her mouth quickly shut. What she'd done to Nikki Bevan was so much worse, showing her the truth and forever replacing the memory of her sweet boy with this scarred old man and that horrific scream. ‘I’m never going to stop hearing that scream,’ Gwen said, shuddering and turning pale.

‘You never do,’ Ianto agreed. ‘I know you thought you were doing the right thing, trying to give a grieving mother some answers, but I don't know if there’s even a right answer.’

‘Jack let me do it,’ Gwen replied, falling sullen and defeated. ‘He let me do it knowing that was coming.’ Suddenly there were tears welling in her eyes as the emotions overwhelmed her. ‘Why would he do that? What kind of heartless individual tortures people like that, just to teach them a lesson?’ One heavy tear drop rolled down a cheek and splashed onto the wooden table in front of her.

Ianto pulled a napkin from the holder on the table and offered it to her. ‘I know Jack would hate me for saying this but it kills him too, you know? This thing absolutely kills him. As soon as he came back last night he just grabbed me and held me. We just sat like that on the sofa for hours, Jack’s arms just wrapped around me squeezing me as tight as he could, as if he could squeeze all of the anguish out of himself by doing so. Gwen looked back at him, her eyes wide with surprise as if she'd never even considered how much it must kill Jack to have to live with that every day.

‘He absolutely hates that place, hates going out there, hates every minute that he's on that island,’ Ianto explained. ‘Every moment he spends out there seems to tear away another little bit of his soul. He never comes back the same person that he was before he left. I think that's why he didn't want anyone else to know. There's enough damaged souls out there without adding to the body count.’

‘But we can't keep it a secret anymore, can we? Gwen said. The whole team knew now.

‘And yet it hasn't changed a single thing,’ he replied. ‘The Rift is still going to take people, take them to places unknown – terrifying, horrible places – and then drop them back here when it’s finished playing with them. I keep waiting for the day when we find one of them and they come back telling us what a lovely time they had and how unexpected it was and how much of a shame it is to be back home again. But it doesn't happen that way, does it?’

‘Life was so much easier before we knew about this, wasn't it?’ she asked him.

‘Life’s always easier when we’re ignorant of what's going on around us,’ he replied. ‘And then we have to grow up and face the truth. Isn't that why it's easier for the families of those who are taken not to have to face that truth the way we have to? Sometimes it’s better to just think someone’s missing.’

Gwen’s head dropped forward, long dark hair cloaking her expression. ‘He's always going to have secrets from us, isn't he?’

Ianto nodded. ‘Yes.’ No matter how much he loved them both.

‘And we're just going to have to live with that, aren't we?’

‘Yes.’

Gwen raised her head and their eyes met across the table in silent understanding. They each raised their mugs and clinked them together.